


The Tale of Ren

by The_Carnivorous_Muffin



Series: Minato Namikaze and the Destroyer of Worlds [19]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Coming of Age, Culture Shock, F/M, Female Harry Potter, Friendship/Love, Master of Death Harry Potter, Murder, Time Travel, Unrequited Love, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-24
Updated: 2018-08-24
Packaged: 2019-07-02 01:32:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 58,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15786216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Carnivorous_Muffin/pseuds/The_Carnivorous_Muffin
Summary: When a red-headed girl appears out of nothingness, bleeding out in his bedroom, and declares herself to be a ninja of Konoha, eight-year-old Tom Riddle decides that his needs are best served in a place other than England.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Obligatory note that this one is NOT CANON.

London, England, 1934

 

* * *

 

“London? Seriously, London?” The red headed girl, dressed in strange almost oriental clothing, asked dubiously from a cross-legged position on his bed. The bed that, upon appearing out of nowhere in his room, bleeding onto the hardwood of the floor, she’d decided belonged to her.

 

Well, she’d also decided his best white shirt, which Tom was expected to wear every Sunday for service, was also hers, as she cut it up into strips and turned it into a makeshift bandage to wrap around her rib cage.

 

Actually it seemed, whoever this strange girl was, she’d decided everything that Tom owned belonged to her.

 

And if she hadn’t appeared out of thin air, and if she wasn’t twirling a short oriental blade between pale fingertips, he’d probably have had more to say about that.

 

As it was he just mulishly glared at her from the chair he was sitting in, not sure how to process this, that there appeared to be others like, well, him… And apparently her.

 

“Of all the places in the world to end up it had to be bloody London,” the girl muttered, sounding perfectly English at least, posher than any of the other orphans at any rate, but when she’d first glared up at Tom with haunting green eyes, suddenly standing, cornering him, and pressing a blade to his throat, she’d been speaking anything but English.

 

She seemed content to leave it at that and returned to putting pressure against her wound, which was at least bleeding less than it had been and not soaking his bed through like he’d first expected, given the amount of blood that had been pouring out of her when she’d first appeared. Although, to her credit, if Tom was being generous, then she at least had had the decency to clear her own bloodstains off the floor.

 

With a wave of her hands she’d made the room look like she’d never arrived in the first place…

 

She was… He’d thought about what the others might look like, if there were others, he’d thought about his father. He’d always pictured something older, something fey almost, maybe a faerie for that matter. Not one of the dumb fairies from newer tales with princes and princesses but the old kind, the dark haunting kind, the kind that Tam Lin had found herself up against.

 

He’d never pictured anything like her.

 

Her vibrant red hair, pulled away from her face in a single pony tail, her startlingly green eyes (a green that was almost unnatural in color, as if things weren’t meant to be quite that green), her pale face and skin, and even the shape of her face and the leanness of her limbs, maybe that he’d pictured.

 

The metal headband though, with a leaf etched into its surface, the wooden platformed sandals with dark socks, the dark sleeveless cotton shirt and the dark fingerless gloves, the short metal throwing knives, and even the short skin-tight absurdly short trousers which revealed more of her pale legs than was decent even if she was only a few years older than him… That he hadn’t pictured.

 

Suddenly, breaking his own silence, still glaring at her and trying to decide whether he loathed her, was fascinated by her, or just plain annoyed, he asked, “What’s wrong with London?”

 

“Everything,” the girl responded shortly, almost dismissively, a severe almost tired patience in her green eyes as she stared down at him, “London is a _genjutsu_ that is too lazy to go about the process of fooling anyone. Not to mention it’s boring, gray, and filled with civilians. I can’t think of anything worse.”

 

“What’s a…” Tom paused, tasted the word and repeated it, “ _genjutsu_.”

 

“Illusion,” the girl responded, head now turned and glaring out his window, looking severely unimpressed by the view of Wool’s courtyard and the grayed brick buildings outside of it. He could hardly blame her though, Tom had been unimpressed by Wool’s for years.

 

He felt himself shifting then, almost, strangely, nervous. Here, here was what he’d been waiting for without really knowing he was waiting for it, here was someone else, someone older, someone like him and… And he’d thought about what he was going to say, of course that was to his father or someone much older than him, someone who’d been looking for him specifically, someone who wanted to hear about all of his triumphs…

 

This girl was none of that and he had no idea to say to her instead.

 

“You can… How did you get here? And how did you clean your blood off the floor?” it came out sharp, a demand, a willed demand at that, one that the likes of Mrs. Cole or a head doctor would have no choice but to answer.

As it was she turned to look at him, with raised eyebrows and a slight frown, as if she was trying to decide if she was amused or annoyed at him. Finally, she drawled a single unhelpful foreign word, “ _Ninjutsu_.”

 

“I can do it too!” Tom blurted, face flushing from the sheer humiliation and desire for recognition , “I can… I can make people do what I want, move things without touching them, I can talk to snakes…”

 

“That’s nice,” the girl supplied dully before adding, “So can Orochimaru- _sama_ , but you don’t hear him bragging.”

 

Flushing horribly, he spat, “It’s true! I’m not lying!”

 

“Well, you have enough _chakra_ for it… And here I thought nobody in England even had _chakra_ ,” finally the girl seemed to see him clearly for the first time, looked about at his surroundings, then back to him, “Don’t tell me _England’s_ really this useless with everyone… If you have this much _chakra_ and I have a godlike amount of _chakra_ , there must be others… and you’re not an academy student, are you?”

 

“I go to school!”

 

That didn’t seem to be what she meant though as she hummed a small considering note, “You’re bragging about basic _genjutsu_ , against civilians, and the Aqua Man of _kekki genkai_ , (I mean, talking to snakes, come on) you would get the shit kicked out of you in a _shinobi_ academy. And besides, you haven’t asked about this.”

 

She tapped her headband twice and gave him a rather meaningful look, one which he could only blink at.

 

Finally, she said slowly, waiting for some reaction from him, some confirmation, “I’m a _Konoha shinobi_ , on your turf.”

 

Then leaning back, “If you were in an academy, or had any kind of training, you’d have long since started throwing _kunai_ at my injured ass and told me to get off your English lawn.”

 

She sighed then and gave him a rather sympathetic look, “I feel for you, _gaki_ , England sucks.”

 

He was… He didn’t think he’d ever been that insulted in his life. He wasn’t sure what she’d said, not really, but whatever she was saying it wasn’t taking him seriously. He felt himself burning, looked at her pretty, thin, fingers and concentrated on them, intent on breaking them with will alone…

 

A metal blade whizzed past his ear, grazing his cheek and leaving a thin trail of blood behind.

 

“Watch it,” the girl warned, eyes meeting his, another blade appearing in her hands out of nowhere, while the other had embedded itself in the wall.

 

Then, she sighed, looking more exhausted than anything else, “Look, I’ll only be in your hair for a day, at most. I may have gotten shanked by plant zombies on my last mission, and until this wound heals up, I’m not risking teleporting that kind of a distance, even if I do really have to get back to my team… Minato’s going to kill me, wait, no, Jiraiya- _sensei_ ’s going to kill me, oh my god, the _nidaime_ ’s totally going to kill me.”

 

“Then you’ll just… leave?” Tom asked.

 

“Did you expect something else?” she asked, looking genuinely flabbergasted, as if she had no idea what else he could possibly want from her.

 

Fine, he didn’t need her anyway, her or her strange words or her ability to summon herself and objects from nowhere. He was obviously better than her anyway, or would be, by the time he was her age. There really was no point throwing pearls before swine…

 

“Do you want to learn how to tree walk?”

 

He looked up found her staring at him in exasperation, frustration, but with an open hand extended towards him in clear invitation. Almost against his will he found himself beaming up at her and taking her hand in his.

 

* * *

 

“So, if you’re from this _Konoha_ then how come you know about England?”

 

She was currently perched sideways on the one tree in the orphanage’s yard, barren in the middle of winter, reading the orphanage’s worn copy of “A Tale of Two Cities” with that unimpressed expression while Tom did his best to focus his… chakra into his bare feet, so that he could stick to the tree like she did, it was proving harder than it looked.

 

As shown by him somehow blowing himself halfway across the yard. She had sworn up and down that nobody would pay attention to him, using that genjutsu term again, and that did seem to be true as no one had bothered to look even with the noise of him crashing into the dirt, but if it wasn’t true oh he’d make her regret it so badly…

 

“Too much _chakra_ ,” she supplied without even looking at him, just flipping another page, and then, “I was born in England, actually, grew up in Surrey.”

 

She then squinted out over the cover of her book, across the street, “Although, I swear, England didn’t look like this the last time I was here.”

 

Walking over, sparing her an annoyed glance and trying again, this time willing a little less of his… will or chakra or whatever she wanted to call it, towards his feet, “When was the last time you were here?”

 

“When I was four, 1984.”

 

This time, he didn’t need any help falling down from the tree in a helpless heap, nearly landing on his head, “What? But it’s only 1934!”

 

The girl considered this, “Oh, well, that would explain some things…”

 

“You mean, you’re from the future?!” he asked, gaping up at her, trying to imagine what fifty years from now would even look like.

 

“I guess, apparently… Feels a little anticlimactic,” the girl finally settled on before returning her attention to the book with a shrug, “Oh well, I guess it doesn’t really matter.

He balked up at her, craning his head as he tried to get a glimpse of her face from behind the book, “Doesn’t matter? But, what’s, what’s the future like?”

 

“Gray, boring, and filled with civilians, I told you,” the girl explained with a dismissive wave of her hand, “Nothing’s really changed, England’s still hopelessly England.”

 

He frowned, breathed out and willed himself to try again, to be as… effortless as she herself was. Magic, chakra, the gift, it had always taken effort, well some had come easier than others, some of it by accident even, but she made it look so easy to just defy gravity like that altogether.

 

And there was the horrifying thought, wiping away the dirt from hos clothing and staring up at her in exhaustion, that perhaps he was mediocre when compared to the others, that perhaps what he’d been so impressed with had been child’s play at best…

 

Gritting his teeth, he willed chakra to his feet once again, searching for that in between state of too much and too little, then carefully placed his first foot against the base of the tree, only to follow it with the other and stand there, at an awkward angle that should have been unsupportable if his feet weren’t sticking to the tree…

 

Ah, there it was.

Wobbling his way up, one step at a time, but feeling the connection between his feet and the tree, he felt a grin building, “So, what’s this _Konoha_ like then, is it in Japan?”

 

“No, _Hi no Kuni_ , actually, you wouldn’t have ever heard of it, I never did growing up,” the girl put the book to the side then mused, “Although, I did grow up inside of a cupboard, so I’ll admit that my information gathering was hardly stellar in those days. Besides, the Dursleys would have loathed everything Konoha stood for, _ninjutsu_ and the Dursleys, well, it didn’t mix.”

 

She shook this off as Tom came even with her, now staring down at her, and past her and down the street into London itself, as if he was somehow standing on top of the skyline, a delicious vertigo overtaking him.

“At any rate, _Konoha_ is a hidden village, so everything there is really based upon it being filled with _ninja_. I mean, there are civilians there and all, and _Konoha_ _nin_ do have a bit of a reputation as being tree huggers but we’re still one of the five great villages so screw all of them,” the girl said with a wave of her hand as if these other great villages could go and kiss her ass, something he found himself strangely grinning at, or perhaps it was just the feeling of chakra still at the bottom of his feet, standing on this tree next to someone who was like him.

 

“You’re a _ninja_ , then?”

 

She nodded and pointed again to the headband, “That’s what the headband means, for future reference, but _genin_ if we want to be technical… Soon to be _chunin_ , we’re taking the exams in a few months.”

 

“Am… Am I a _ninja_ then?” he asked almost cautiously, but she didn’t even seem to notice as she stared up at him with those cold green eyes of hers.

 

“No,” she held up a hand before she could protest this, “You have the _chakra_ for it, and you could be very good one day, hell you got tree walking faster than Minato did. But England doesn’t have a hidden village, and you’re untrained, which means that whatever you end up being it’s not going to be a _shinobi_.”

 

“There aren’t… Others, then, here, in London.”

 

But somehow, he already knew her answer before she said it, had felt it with every year that he wasted away inside of this cold and dreary orphanage.

 

“No, not that I’ve ever seen.”

 

She looked at him then and grinned, a grin that was filled with more happiness than anyone deserved, and she asked, “Well, since you’ve apparently mastered tree walking how do you feel about impersonating Jesus?”

 

* * *

 

She stayed the rest of that day, and that night, coaching him and demonstrating how to walk on top of water, how to have leaves stick to his skin, as well as how to best punch Dennis in the face without hurting his hands.

 

At the end, near sunrise, they both sat on his bed, his extra Wool’s uniform now replacing his blood-stained Sunday shirt as her bandage, staring out the window into the lightening sky in relative silence, her departure immanent.

 

“It’s Tom Riddle, Tom Marvolo Riddle” he said, as golden light peaked over the horizon and the first taste of morning made its way through London, “My name, I mean.”

 

“Eru, Lee Eru,” the girl, Lee, replied.

 

“I’ve always hated my name though,” Tom confessed, “Anyone can be called Tom.”

 

“What would you rather be called?” the girl asked, taking his words in more stride than he’d ever expected from anyone, but then, he’d never met anyone like her.

 

“I don’t know something grander, unique, that everyone would remember and know to fear,” swallowing he said, “Something that says, here’s someone who can change the world.”

 

“A true revolutionary,” Lee said with a soft smile, one that seemed to tear him out from the inside, because no one had ever smiled at him like that, “Lenin then?”

 

“Lenin, like the Russian?” He wasn’t entirely sure he saw the connection, for all that it seemed to make her smile.

 

“It suits you,” she replied distantly, considering his name, and for a moment he considered it too, this strange Soviet name she’d bestowed upon him…

 

“Or better, Ren, Ren- _nin_ , the lotus _ninja_ ,” she said letting the name transform itself and roll off her tongue, “The lotus flower is supposed to last an eternity, since it’s always blooming, you know.”

 

He smiled weakly back at her and to his horror, as the light began to flood their room, he found tears spilling over from his eyes, “I don’t want to stay here.”

 

He was shaking his head now, no his whole body shaking, and the tears came faster as he thought about this day, easily the best if strangest day of his life, and tomorrow she’d be gone and it’d be like she’d never been there in the first place, and everything would go back to the way it was…

 

“Ren, a _shinobi_ ’s life…” she stopped, strailed off, calloused fingers wiping tears from his cheek, “It’s not always something to envy.”

 

“You will kill, you will fight and battle and protect, and it will last every day of your life,” Drawing him close, whispering into his ear, she said, “And these civilian comforts, a life without death hanging overhead, a comfortable bed you can always rely on, these will be gone.”

 

“You did it, didn’t you?!” he hissed out, willing the tears to stop, for his hands to stop clenching at her clothing, but his body itself was betraying him.

 

“I had no reason to stay,” Lee said and there was a thread of darkness in those words, something no sane man would dare to touch, “There was nothing for me in England. And Minato, Minato Namikaze was inside of _Konoha_ and I would burn worlds to the ground for his sake.”

 

He drew back, eyes blazing, staring into hers even as the tears rolled down his face, “I can’t stay here, Lee.”

 

Then, with shaking hands, reaching up for her face, bringing her forehead against his, “If you leave me here I’ll die.”

 

Not now, no, it’d take years, but England, the cold dreary civilian filled world of England would drain the very life and chakra from him until all that was left was a husk of what he should be. A poison, one he could resist only so long, until one day he would be just as bland as Mrs. Cole and all the rest.

 

A small laugh against the bridge of his nose, that lazy smile, her eyes seemed to be glowing in the half light as she looked at him with such fondness, “Then, you’d better get used to calling me Eru- _san_.”

 

And there was a great wrenching, a dizzying sensation of vertigo, colors blinding and everywhere and the feeling of rushing through space and time itself, and then…

 

Then sudden solid ground, the smell of dirt and the sight of a small archaic village, and a blonde boy with a silver gleaming headband shouting her name and running towards her, followed by a rather indistinguishable boy of the same age and three adults, “Lee!”

 

And Lee was then pulling him up even as she embraced the blonde, rapidly explaining something, pointing to Tom then and motioning to him even as the others came closer and started yelling, one of the white-haired men going so far as to whack her on the backside of the head.

 

And Tom, even though he didn’t understand a word of it, he couldn’t help but feel that after eight years, eight years of worthless solitude in Wool’s Orphanage, he had finally found his people.

 

* * *

 

“So, let me get this straight,” Jiraiya started as they made camp for the night, looking at Lee with a thoroughly unimpressed expression that was only matched by the nidaime’s. Well, Minato didn’t look exactly pleased, but more relieved than anything else, Dead Last looked Dead Last-ish as usual, the legendary Tsunade-sama seemed miffed that Lee had stolen her voodoo necklace in order to get her to Konoha (she seemed to have a bit of a complex), and little Ren just looked confused put out and a little miffed that he was confused, “You got stabbed by plant zombies, after wandering off by yourself like a total idiot…”

 

“Yup,” Lee interjected, which, really, she probably wouldn’t be trying that again as she really had been outmatched when multiple plant zombie jonin had made their way out of the woodworks, but it wasn’t as if she’d died or anything.

 

“They managed to stab you through the rib cage after you light one of them on fire…”

 

“Uh huh,” Lee nodded in agreement, although Jiraiya had already pointed out the first time that she’d gotten stabbed, he really was just repeating himself at this point.

 

“Then you teleport, all the way to _England_ , wherever the hell that even is…”  


“It’s an island,” Lee helpfully pointed out.

 

“Yeah, Lee, very helpful,” Jiraiya said, rubbing the bridge of his nose before continuing, “Anyways, you teleport to _England_ , where you find this random ass _English_ kid with bucket loads of chakra and ridiculous chakra control, teach him to water walk in half a day…”

 

“He’s not quite as shinobi Jesus as I am but he’s not bad,” Lee said with a slight nod towards Ren, who seemed to perk up a bit at the attention, but then slumped once he realized that they weren’t about to switch into English.

 

“The hell is a shinobi Jesus?” Lee heard Tsunade whisper to her great uncle, but such things seemed beneath Senju Tobirama, who only gave a hapless shrug and a resigned shake of his head.

 

“And then, you apparently decide to kidnap him, and teleport him back to whatever random village in the Land of Fire we happened to make it to if we still weren’t stuck in battle with plant zombies!”

 

“Kidnapping’s a strong word,” Lee said, eyes flicking to the boy, who really should have been in the middle of his of his academy training, if England had made any sense at all, “He was perfectly willing.”

 

“My ass it’s a strong word, Lee-chan,” Jiraiya said before waving his hand and commanding, “Look, take him back.”

 

“What, no, no, I’m not taking him back,” Lee said before holding up her hands, “I wouldn’t inflict _England_ upon anyone.”

 

Seeing Jiraiya’s completely unconvinced expression she pointed to Ren almost in desperation, “Besides, he asked me! I even gave him the whole, ‘maybe you don’t want to be a shinobi because you’ll have to kill people and probably end up with a knife in your stomach and civilians will look down on you in moral judgement forever’ and he still wanted to go! I am being a good Samaritan here, sensei!”

 

Jiraiya turned to Minato, “Minato-kun, ask the kid if Lee kidnapped him.”

 

“Uh, sensei, how am I…” Minato started and then asked, “Tactfully?”

 

But Jiraiya didn’t appear to be in the mood of how Minato was supposed to politely ask an eight-year-old English civilian if Lee had kidnapped him. Which, she totally hadn’t, if anything she’d been manipulated, hell he’d even threatened suicide on her.

 

“Right, well,” Minato paused, eyes flickered to the English boy and faced him more fully, then desperately trying not to cringe, asked, “ _Hello, my name’s Minato Namikaze and I’m a friend of Lee’s. Lee says you’re called Ren?_ ”

 

Ren just raised an impertinent dark eyebrow at Minato.

 

Lee had thought it earlier, but there was something almost Uchiha in Tom Marvolo Riddle, he almost had their hair, although his was slightly curlier than theirs usually tended to be, the paleness of their skin, the pale striking blue eyes were all his own, but something in the aristocratic look of him, the pride of his every gesture, that was all Uchiha.

 

Minato seemed to realize that there was no beating around the awkward bush and decided to just get to it, “ _Yes, well, I know this is going to sound very abrupt but… Did you want to come with Lee? Did she force you to come here or not ask if you wanted to come? I guess what I’m trying to ask is if you wanted to stay in England._ ”

 

Ren’s other eyebrow raised and he turned his attention from Minato to Lee then Jiraiya, then back to Lee, and in plain strangely well-articulated English for an eight-year-old, said, “ _You can tell your…_ sensei _, that I would rather rot in hell and be eaten by three headed dogs than be dragged back to England._ ”

 

Jiraiya just raised his eyebrows in response, looked to Minato, who, with some awkwardness said, “I don’t think he wants to go back, sensei.”

 

“Yeah, well, what about his parents…”

 

“He’s an orphan,” Lee interjected before Jiraiya could even go down the disapproving parents disapprove route he seemed set on, “And he says the matron hates him, the kids hate him, and that I’m the nicest person he’s ever met.”

 

“Well that’s convenient,” the nidaime muttered, eyes landing on the boy, but the boy didn’t even bother to look, as if such an action was beneath him.

 

Jiraiya, naturally, looked flabbergasted by this declaration. Which, Lee had been a little put off by it too, as usually she wasn’t described as… nice.

 

But then, judging by what she saw, he wasn’t much better off than she was in a cupboard. He just had the pleasure of having a slightly larger cupboard. If Orochimaru had shown up inside of her cupboard miraculously and even gave her an ounce of attention she probably would have followed him to the ends of the earth.

 

And what a sad life that would have been.

 

“Does he even know what it means to be a shinobi, Lee?!” Jiraiya finally shouted, but Lee just leaned forward, more than certain that she had already won this argument, as Ren was already firmly on her side.

 

And at the end of things, that was what truly mattered.

 

“Enough,” Lee said, “And he’ll learn, he’ll go to the academy and he’ll figure it out quickly enough, he’s not stupid, sensei.”

 

No, Ren was anything but stupid, even as young as eight his eyes practically burned with intelligence, it really was a pity he’d been born English because he probably would have made decent company at the academy. Well… And if he hadn’t been four years younger than her.

 

“He only speaks _English_ , he’s not going to the academy any time soon,” Jiraiya pointed out.

 

“Good, more time to learn then,” Lee said before adding, “I don’t see the problem here, I’m getting Konoha another excellent ninja… With blood limits.”

 

“Blood limits?” the nidaime asked.

 

“He uh… talks to snakes, I guess,” Lee said, almost cringing, and Ren had been so proud too, ridiculously proud when, clearly, he’d never seen Aqua Man in action.

 

“That’s… an interesting blood limit,” the nidaime finally said after a moment of silence, “He didn’t mean summons, did he?”

 

“No way, Oro’s got that contract and his clan has had that contract for generations, not that it’s much of a clan anymore but...” Jiraiya started, twisting to look at the nidaime incredulously.

 

“No, I think he meant actual snakes,” Lee interrupted, still cringing on Ren’s behalf, because watch him go bragging to the Uchiha clan, ‘Oh yeah, you’ve got death-eyes, well I can talk to snakes, bitch’, “Yeah, it’s… kind of lame.”

 

“I don’t know, that could be useful,” Minato mused, “I’m sure it’s an excellent way to gather intelligence and send messages, maybe even poison someone if he can convince a snake to do his bidding.”

 

“Minato, he’s two steps away from being a fairy princess who summons her animal friends when she’s in distress,” Lee pointed out, causing Minato to flush and cringe slightly as even he failed to save Ren from embarrassment, “It’s super lame.”

 

Ren had the fortune of being perfectly oblivious about this conversation, but even without knowing the language, he seemed to know when it was revolving around him, and unfavorably at that as he glared down at the dirt and seemed to resist the urge to fidget.

 

“At any rate, he’s coming with us to Konoha and he’s getting registered as a citizen,” Lee said, “End of discussion.”  


“Lee-chan, I think I decide when we’re done discussing things,” Jiraiya pointed out, “But fine, whatever, we take him into Konoha and put him through processing and then you and Minato get to deal with him on a daily basis.”

 

“What, us?” Minato asked, eyebrows raising.

 

“Do you know anyone else fluent in _English_?” Jiraiya asked, “Besides, Lee’s the only person he really knows right now, if we’re really integrating him then she’s the one who’s going to have to play tour guide.”

 

“People on tours don’t usually move in with their tour guides,” Lee groused, not that she didn’t like the kid, but she’d sort of been looking forward to going home and doing the usual ramen thing, not getting stabbed by plants, and well, just not being on duty.

 

“Yeah, well, you should have thought about that before you kidnapped him.” And then Jiraiya decided it was time to sleep, rolling onto his back and nodding at the nidaime to take the first watch, not even twitching as Lee shouted, “I did not kidnap him!”

 

And that seemed to be that, well, at least she’d gotten him in. Looking at the kid in question she said, “ _You’d better get some sleep, Ren, we start early tomorrow… Also, when we get into Konoha, after T &I makes sure you’re not an assassin sent to slit our throats, you’re living with me and Minato… It’ll be great._”

 

She didn’t give the dumbfounded Ren a chance to answer as she too rolled onto her back, and finally, after far too many sleepless hours, she too, embraced oblivion.

 

* * *

 

Tom found himself standing, a pair of hands on his shoulders, one hand from Lee and the other from Minato, outside of a rather plain looking apartment. He was still clutching his new papers, given to him after older men had asked him questions with Minato Namikaze to play translator, as a blonde older man had stared eerily deeply into Tom’s eyes, in a strangely penetrating way, that Tom couldn’t help but wonder if the man had somehow seen Tom’s very soul.

 

The papers declared him as Ren, written with a single unfamiliar character that almost looked Chinese, with his dazed picture (taken just outside of that white room) clipped to the front. And there wasn’t a hint of Tom Marvolo Riddle in any of it and… And he didn’t think he wanted there to be any.

 

“Well, this is it,” Lee announced with that overeager yet strangely shallow grin that she seemed to wear quite often, “Me and Minato’s bachelor pad.”

 

“Is it really a bachelor pad, Lee?” Minato asked, looking at her with something like resigned embarrassment, before he looked down at Ren and explained, “Lee and I have lived here ever since we graduated from the academy. We also lived together in the orphanage.”

 

“You’re orphans?” he asked to which they both nodded, Lee as if this was matter of fact, and Minato with a slight hesitance.

 

“Car wreck back in England,” Lee explained with a shrug, “Lived with my aunt, uncle, and cousin until I was four and went to Konoha’s orphanage.”

 

“Bandits,” Minato said softly, “It was a long time ago now.”

 

Minato Namikaze, Lee had mentioned him, when she’d taken him from England, and Tom wasn’t quite sure what to make of him. He dressed like Lee, in a way, he wore white and blue mostly instead of the darker colors she seemed to prefer, but he had the same headband and those same platformed sandals with dark socks. He was blonde though, with pale blue eyes almost like Tom’s, but even with all that he still looked almost Asian, something about the almond shape of his eyes and the rest of his features…

 

He was, softer, than Lee, that wasn’t really the word for it but he couldn’t come up with another one. He hadn’t met anyone like Minato Namikaze at the orphanage either, but then, there’d been no one like anyone at the orphanage. He was beginning to understand what Lee had meant by it being an illusion, because compared to the people he met here, none of them seemed to stick out to him.

 

“Right, well, let’s get this show on the road,” Lee said and without further ado, opened the door to reveal a small, but well-kept apartment. Tom stepped in, gazing about, eyes landing on the sofa and a great black box resting in front of it…

“Oh, right, you didn’t have that in 1934,” Lee commented, “That’s television, it’s a gift from the gods.”

 

“Wait, he’s from where?” Minato asked as he shut the door behind them.

“When, Minato, Ren’s from fifty years in the past, well, _England’s_ past.” Lee said before musing, “Jesus, you haven’t even been through the second world war yet… Nazi references will be totally lost on you.”

 

“Fifty years in the past?!” Minato spluttered, making Tom feel slightly better, because apparently Lee really was this blasé about everything.

 

Lee didn’t even seem to notice as she pointed into the kitchen, “That’s the refrigerator, it keeps food cold so it spoils slower, it’s also a gift from the gods. And that’s the microwave, it cooks food ridiculously quickly using science, it’s also a gift from the gods. And that’s the stove… Pretty sure you have those in 1934.”

 

“Lee, you never said you traveled in time and…” Minato was clutching at his golden hair, an extremely vibrant yellow almost the color of sunshine, and appeared to be having some sort of mild panic attack.

 

“ _English_ time, Minato, I’m pretty sure we’re not on the same plane of existence, or something.”

 

“That doesn’t even make any sense!”

 

“Does it have to? I mean, the universe doesn’t try to make sense any other time, does it?” Lee asked, but more rhetorically than anything else, as if this was a familiar argument that she was saying for the sake of saying, “I mean, I’m just going to chalk this up to another clear and undeniable sign that the universe is a patchy _genjutsu_ in the process of falling to pieces.”

 

Minato then responded rapidly in the other language, and Lee switched into it right along with him, and neither seemed to pay him much attention at all.

 

Tom moved past them, looking down at a round table without chairs, much lower than any table he’d ever seen, at a height where he could sit on the floor, on the small cushions beside it. He stepped past it and towards the window, staring out to see three faces carved into the mountainside, one looking like one of the white haired men, the smaller one, who’d travelled with them on the way back… Tobirama Senju, the honorable second, Lee had called him.

 

A hand fell on his shoulder, “You alright, Ren?”

 

He looked up to find Minato staring down at him, looking at him like… Not as if he didn’t know, didn’t know exactly the kind of freak Tom Riddle was, but with a soft sort of smile that had been in the vein of what Lee had worn when she looked at him.

 

Then he found himself glowering, he didn’t need these people’s pity, he knocked off Minato’s hand watching as the boy blinked at him in confusion, “I’m fine.”

 

“You just looked a little preoccupied,” Minato noted before looking out the window with him, “That’s the _hokage_ monument, by the way, all of those men up there at one point or another have been the leader of the village.”

 

“ _Hokage_ , you mean?” Tom asked.

 

“The shadow of fire,” Minato responded, before pointing, “The first is Hashirama Senju, the second who you met is his younger brother Tobirama Senju, and the third and our current _hokage_ is Hiruzen Sarutobi.”

 

Then, an idiot’s cheerful smile, “My dream is to become _hokage_ one day.”

 

Tom felt himself staring dully back, sneering, and repeating Lee’s own dismissive words that she’d launched at him when they’d first met, “That’s nice.”

 

Something sharp entered Minato’s eyes then, something that gave Tom slight pause, but it faded as fast as it came and Minato’s smile shifted into something sly and almost amused, “Yes, it’s a very nice dream, I think at any rate.”

 

Tom’s eyebrows raised slightly, Minato inclining his head, that smug smile just growing as Tom began to see red (and if he was in England he would break this boy’s fingers and…)

 

And a throwing knife, out of nowhere, whizzed past his ear again and cut once again across his face, embedding itself into the wood paneling of the window.

 

“I thought I told you to watch it,” Lee said, “Jesus Christ, if you were taller and a bit more lethal I’d take your killing intent seriously, but in the body of an untrained civilian it’s just kind of sad, Ren.”

 

“Lee,” Minato said chidingly, shaking his head, as if not at all concerned that that thing had almost embedded itself in Tom’s skull, “he’s just gotten here don’t be…”

 

“If he thinks you’re soft he will walk all over you and he will not appreciate you kicking the shit out of him to show him who’s boss,” Lee said even as she yanked her knife from the wall and repaired the hole with a mere wave of her hand. Then, eyes landing on Tom, giving him a truly unimpressed expression, she said, “You’re not in the land of civilians anymore, try to break people’s fingers, and you will probably die. Save that shit for the enemy _nin_ … Or spars.”

 

Minato cringed but then sighed and said, “Look, Ren, Lee has… a point. If you start using _jutsus_ in public, with comrades, they’ll take it as a signal that you’re ready for them to dish out _jutsus_ of equal strength. That’s not a fight you’re ready to win right now.”

 

Tom felt himself flush, tried to tamper it down, and shouted, “What would you know?!”

 

“You just got here,” Lee pointed out dully, which only somehow added to the boiling of Tom’s blood, because he’d never, never been this underestimated, and if he had then they’d always regretted it and he’d shown them…

 

“I have powers I have… jutsus too!” He then turned to Minato, focused his will, “Stand on one leg.”

 

Minato’s eyes dulled for a moment, he looked down at Tom as if considering, a dull look crossing his face, then just as suddenly he crossed his arms and shouted, “ _Kai!_ ”

 

And Tom, faster than he could even see, was backhanded by Lee, “Minato’s off limits, harass Dead Last if you must win some territorial pissing contest.”

 

Dazed, he stared at the floor for a moment, blinking and trying to figure out what happened and how she’d even moved so fast, but also trying to sort his emotions and…

 

“Lee!” Minato said, looking appalled, “He’s just lost everything he’s ever known, left his home, no one here even speaks his language…”

 

“You didn’t see me going sending everyone into _genjutsus_ for the hell of it when I got here,” Lee said, hands now casually entering her pockets and looking down at Tom with… With exasperation of all things.

 

As if he was some mildly irritating pest that she was being coerced into dealing with.

 

“You did exactly that!” Minato shouted, “You’ve been doing that for years!”

 

Lee for a moment looked stunned, large eyes blinking, then said, “…That was for far more legitimate reasons. Uzumaki insulted your honor.”

 

“And this?” Minato said, motioning to Tom.

 

“He also insulted your honor,” Lee said, “Besides, better to sort this out now then have the entire village beating him up for being an arrogant civilian born upstart.”

 

Minato, along with Tom, seemed to be wordless, even as Lee seemed to think nothing of it as she said, “Right, anyways, over there’s the bedroom, and that’s the bookshelf filled with a bunch of English stuff… Add to it if I’ve missed anything I guess. And that’s the apartment, it’s great.”

 

Then Lee announced, “And now, I’m tired… I’m going to go take a nap, you two go bond or something.”

 

And with that, she walked into the bedroom, shutting the door behind her, leaving Minato and Tom, Tom with a red hand print still across his face, to stare at each other.

 

“So, Ren, do you want to go get _ramen_?”

 

* * *

 

The boy, Ren, stared at the ramen as if he wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. Then again, he’d been staring at everything as if he wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. He was still wearing his foreign, English, civilian clothing… It looked much different than Lee’s had, hers had been far more colorful, her shoe bulkier. This boy was dressed in gray, in what looked like some kind of uniform, his shoes thinner and almost worn through in some places.

 

Yet there was still an English, a Lee-like, look to him. In the texture of his hair, the shape of his eyes and nose, and maybe even his eye color itself, that cold and sharp blue that was paler than even Minato’s.

 

“Don’t mind Lee,” Minato said, “She sometimes has no tact at all, and she means well, most of the time.”

 

“She slapped me,” Ren noted dully, not particularly hurt by this, but instead sort of stunned, as he’d been stunned the entire walk from the apartment. Like, not that he was surprised that Lee had slapped him (well, he was), but that she’d been capable of touching him like that.

 

But, well, Minato had seen her point. The boy was good, especially for being untrained, and even seemed to have some of the talents that Minato had always assumed were Lee’s and Lee’s alone… But he’d been a big fish in a small pond, and it’d become clear that he’d expected both Lee, then Minato when Lee had proved indomitable, to fall in line and let him reign like a king.

 

And one of these days, if he kept that up, he was going to piss off someone who had no compunctions leaving him in a crater.

 

“Wherever you come from,” Minato started slowly, trying to find the words to express himself even as he started, “You were the best and brightest, weren’t you?”

 

The boy’s eyes widened but otherwise his expression didn’t betray him, all the same Minato calmly added, “Anyone who challenged you or got in your way was easily dealt with, either by _genjutsu_ or _ninjutsu_ , and even adults didn’t have much authority over you I imagine. You were in a village comprised of civilians… You are no longer inside that village.”

 

Minato folded his hands, “I was the second best in my class by a mile, and only second best because Lee was in my class, and you picked a fight with me. More, after witnessing Lee teleporting, an easily S-ranked ability that spells the death of _ninja_ who have been training for decades, you picked a fight with her. And you did it for no real reason, but rather, to assert authority you don’t have in a place you’re completely unfamiliar with. Lee was trying to stop you before you got yourself killed.”

 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ren said petulantly into his ramen, stabbing at it with his chopsticks, appearing to be just as unfamiliar with the utensils as Lee had once been (though, in Lee’s defense, she’d picked up the use of them absurdly quickly).

 

“Not everyone is as nice as me, or Lee, for that matter. If you go pissing off Orochimaru, you’ll probably find yourself in the hospital or a shallow grave,” he paused then and considered the flushing Ren, “ _Shinobi_ are, we’re warriors, Ren, we’ve been trained to fight since the age of six and sometimes to kill. Fighting us head on, just to try and prove you’re better than us, it’s not a smart idea.”

 

 Minato waited for the boy to turn to him, but it took a painfully long time until Ren finally met his eyes, “A _shinobi_ , a smart _shinobi_ , listens, and he waits. He analyzes his situation, he gathers intelligence, and he prepares himself for battle only after assessing his own strengths and weaknesses and the strengths and weaknesses of the enemy. And he recognizes that it will not be his own village that will stab him in the back.”

 

“Then who will, stab me in the back, that is?” The boy asked.

 

“ _Kumo_ , _Iwa_ , _Suna_ on a bad day, _Kiri_ , _nuke nin_ , take your pick,” Minato said waving his hands as if to illuminate the countless enemies of Konoha, “Don’t worry, there will be plenty of violence, and plenty of chances to gain renown in your own right. That’s your dream, isn’t it? Recognition?”

 

The boy’s eyes flew wide open, and it was almost funny, how Ren thought he was hard to read.

 

“I’ve always been good at that sort of stuff,” Minato said with an easy smile, “Now, you should eat the rest of that ramen, because honestly, I’m kind of tired too. We can get started on teaching you something other than English tomorrow.”

 

The boy nodded, quickly finished his noodles and hopped down from the table leaving Minato to pay the bill (not quite willing to hold debt over Orochimaru’s head as eagerly as Lee was). Before they could head back though, Minato noted, almost casually, “By the way, Ren, if you try to gut me in my sleep I will kill you.”

 

And with that out of the way, they were off once again, back to the apartment, and the same apartment that Lee’s stray Ren would now get to call home.

 

* * *

 

Ren, being one of three English speakers in the village, and as far as the nidaime was concerned the only reliable native speaker they had, had been put to task along with Minato and Lee on translating Lee’s rather unwieldly collection of English books and translated screenplays for pittance D-rank pay.

 

Of course, Ren seemed to be flabbergasted he was getting paid for anything at all, even something as simple as flipping through a bunch of Lee’s old journals. Especially since he, only having been in Konoha a few weeks and barely managing to get himself through present tense conversation without sound like a half-wit, was still illiterate and could barely write his name and thus was being paid to, ‘get up to speed’ before Minato and Lee were dragged off on permanent D-rank duty to come up with some English curriculum.

 

Since England was now a patented thing, as it had produced both her and Ren, even if they were fifty years apart.

 

(Tobirama Senju seemed utterly convinced that there was some secret hidden English village that operated on totally different means and goals than Konoha’s, to which Lee cried out bullshit, because what kind of a stupid village would let not only Ren get poached by enemy nin but also Lee herself.

 

Still, the nidaime hadn’t been convinced by that argument, and thus, English lessons.)

 

“Blade Runner… I haven’t heard of half of these,” Ren said, blinking at the book Lee had just set aside, now moving on to translating ‘Total Recall’ into something a shinobi would probably find utterly horrifying (the idea of having been placed under genjutsu, as an enemy nin, and not being able to tell whether you were a double agent and which side you were truly on, was far more pressing to a shinobi than it was to a civilian).

 

“Bit beyond your time,” Lee said, reaching for a stick of pockey as she opened to the first page and began to choose her words to recreate the opening dream of Mars.

 

Ren blinked at that, then returned to his own paper, his name written over and over again in wobbly and then slightly less wobbly calligraphy.

 

Lee had to give him credit, he worked quickly, not quite as alarmingly fast as she had picked up everything, if she thought about it, but he was far from slow. However, this thought slipped from her as she continued, Minato working on his translation of ‘Lord of the Flies’, and they continued like this until Ren interrupted them again.

 

“Mrs. Cole would be horrified by _ninja_ , I think,” Ren mused, and it was musing, not really accusatory in any fashion but more than an idle thought.

 

“Mrs. Cole is a civilian,” Lee responded, glancing up from her work briefly to meet his eyes, “Civilians in general squeeze themselves into moral knots when it comes to _ninja_.”

 

“You kill people,” Ren said, and here, Minato’s pen stalled as well and for a moment there was a tense silence among the three of them.

 

“ _Shinobi_ walk in the shadow of death,” Lee said slowly, “Those _kunai_ aren’t for show, Ren.”

 

“Mrs. Cole thought I was a demon because she thought that I hurt people sometimes,” Ren added, “But I never killed anyone.”

 

“You had entirely too much free time on your hands in that orphanage,” Minato muttered, before rubbing a hand through his hair and breathing out and looking at Lee, stating in his own native tongue, “ _I wonder if Orochimaru-sama was anything like that when he was younger._ ”

 

(Well, they did both love snakes…)

 

Ren’s eyes narrowed, and, as usual, he had the nerve to look insulted (he really was incredibly touchy), “What’s that supposed to mean?”

 

“It means that it’s sad that you beat up civilians for fun,” Lee said, and as usual, when Lee bluntly told it like it was, Ren flushed beat red with embarrassment (which, really, he should have known better, because that was apparently exactly what he’d been doing for years).

 

“I don’t beat up…”

 

“No, you didn’t even do that,” Lee said as she eyed him, “Your _taijutsu’s_ nonexistent, you used paltry _genjutsu_ tricks and limited _ninjutsu_ , to beat up civilians for fun.”

 

“It was not for fun!”

 

“Then why?” Lee asked, in all seriousness, taking Ren in piece by piece and dismantling him and trying to see the truth of him, “What could you possibly gain from punching a bunch of civilians with what amounts to parlor tricks? Surely, it wasn’t respect.”

 

Lee, in her days with the Dursleys, had never gone out of her way to torment Dudley though she could have swatted him like a fly. There had been no point, Dudley wasn’t even a person, his opinion less than inconsequential, to waste her time on him was to humor the absurdity of the universe itself.

 

Apparently, judging by the way Ren was gritting his teeth, it was respect, which, well, that was maybe even sadder.

 

“Regardless,” Minato cut in before Ren’s volatile ninjutsu could set the kitchen on fire accidentally again (as he’d already done three times since moving in), “You’re going to have to get yourself some new hobbies.”

 

“Why?” Ren asked, now the accusing glint of steel in his eyes, “I thought that’s what _shinobi_ did, hurt people.”

 

“In _Konoha_ , we believe in _shinobi_ existing to protect our comrades and the village,” Lee said with a shrug, “Sometimes that means hurting people, usually other village’s _ninja_ , other times it doesn’t, it all depends. Either way, you really need to get over this incessant need to prove yourself king of the hill.”

 

The last time Lee had pointed this out, Ren had tried to set her shoes on fire, in retaliation, she’d kicked him so hard he’d flown through the drywall of their apartment. Ren, while prideful to a fault, apparently was not stupid enough to try again. So, instead, settled for moody glaring and practicing his calligraphy with an almost demonic diligence, leaving both Minato and Lee to stare at him with raised eyebrows.

 

“ _You know, Lee, I always wanted a younger sibling,_ ” Minato commented as he stared across at Ren, “ _But I’d hoped for one that wasn’t an emotional wreck of a sociopath._ ”

 

Lee paused, tilting her head, “ _Can sociopaths be emotional wrecks?_ ”

 

With a rather resigned look as he stared down at Ren, Minato cast her an exhausted smile, and said, “ _Judging by our little roommate and friend, yes, I think they can._ ”

 

“When am I going to this academy anyways?” Ren asked, breaking into Lee and Minato’s conversation, the look on his face saying he was perfectly aware they were gossiping about him again.

 

“When you can write more than just your name,” Lee said, “Which, given the speed at which you’re going, I’d say next year.”

 

“And they’ll teach me everything you know?” he asked, and there was the eagerness in his eyes, that almost alarming eagerness which he’d directed towards Lee when she first crash landed in his room (well, when he hadn’t looked murderous, frustrated, or almost pitifully sad).

 

“The academy three,” Lee said, “And you’ll probably get a chance to pick up a little bit of whatever you have some talent in, if that’s what you mean. I honestly wasn’t paying that much attention at the time, you’ll have to ask Minato.”

 

“Why weren’t you paying attention?” Ren cut in before Minato could even open his mouth, which was rather typical of Ren, actually.

 

“Because I am the god of _ninjutsu_ ,” Lee said with a wave of her hand, as if this was inconsequential, which it was in the sense that anybody who was anybody already knew this. Lee’s ninjutsu was nothing to be sneered at by anyone.

 

“You’ll do fine,” Minato finally said, “And don’t worry, you’ll learn plenty, besides if you pass your academy exams and become a _genin_ , then you can be placed on a team and learn under a _jonin sensei_ , like Jiraiya- _sensei_ for us.”

 

“But you’re taking the chunin exams soon,” Ren said, as if repeating information heard a while back.

 

“In a few months,” Minato responded, “And sometimes, if a _genin_ shows potential after that, they’re placed under a _jonin_ as an apprentice to learn more practiced craft.”

 

“And then, one day, you take your _jonin_ exams.”

 

“Not everyone does,” Lee said with a wave of her hand, “There are lots of _genin_ who never pass their _chunin_ exams, plenty of career _chunin_ , and actually fairly few _jonin_ especially if you’re not including the specialized _jonin_.”

 

“But you both plan to,” Ren pointed out, and for a moment Lee and Minato just looked at each other, and blankly considered a world where either Namikaze Minato or Eru Lee somehow wouldn’t end up jonin, and both ended up laughing hysterically.

 

“Good god, Ren,” Lee finally said, wiping her eyes after she’d calmed down, “Sometimes you just slay me.”

 

* * *

 

It wasn’t like the orphanage.

 

Tom didn’t know how long it took for that to really sink in, he’d though he’d known at first but… But it was nothing like the orphanage.

 

He found himself dumbly sitting by himself at the ramen booth, escorted oddly enough by the nidaime of all people (who sometimes made it a habit of visiting the apartment, usually to harass Lee or Minato into getting translations done or working on that English curriculum, but sometimes apparently just to visit Tom, or Ren, as everyone called him).

 

Everything was different, at first he’d thought he could count on some things being the same, or things being different only at the surface, but the people themselves were different. Lee was a complete mystery, raw power in human form that seemed sometimes only vaguely amused by humanity’s antics and the inconsistency of her world, and Minato…

 

Sometimes he loathed Namikaze Minato, for reasons that weren’t entirely clear even to himself.

 

Actually, it was clear, it’d just taken him months to even admit it to himself. Minato was better than he was. He was older, more compelling, more experienced, closer friends with Lee, and maybe even smarter than Tom was. And there was this ease with which he approached things, everything, that Tom just didn’t have anymore.

 

And everything Tom had prided himself in, his…. His ninjutsu parlor tricks! They were all counted as worthless here, cute little talents to amuse and frighten civilians at will, but useless in his untrained hands.

 

To Lee, even to Minato, probably to the entire village, Tom was just like a moody little crying Billy Stubbs after realizing that his rabbit wasn’t as invincible as he thought it was. And Tom hated that.

 

“So, Ren-san, Minato and Lee say you’ve been progressing in our language.”

 

Tom looked up to find the nidaime looking speculatively down at him, with those alarming red eyes, that seemed somehow both cold and hot at the same time.

 

“Yes, sir,” Tom responded carefully, and for a moment, Tom swore he saw the man’s lips twitch almost in amusement.

 

“You’ve probably realized why I’ve asked you here today, even when team seven is on another one of their horrifying C-ranked missions,” the nidaime said, this last part like it was some sort of ironic joke.

 

Tom tried to keep his face impassive, although, he’d learned quickly enough that his tells were quite loud to ninja, even genin, and even if he kept his face still something gave him away every single time.

 

With a raised eyebrow at Tom’s confusion, the nidaime said, “As you may have realized, Lee is a somewhat… fallible resource when it comes to information on her home country.”

 

“You want to hear about _England_ ,” Tom finished for him, then winced, realizing at once that it was entirely too informal for someone like the second honorable shadow of fire. However, Senju Tobirama hardly seemed to mind, seemed a little amused if anything.

 

“In due time, you probably aren’t ready to answer all the questions I have yet,” he said, “Instead I wanted to ask you something that maybe you can answer, or attempt to find the words to. A strange, blood soaked girl, who threatens you with a knife to your throat, enters your room claiming to be a warrior from a land you’ve never heard of. There you are, an _English_ boy, with _English_ prospects, and yet you choose to throw it all away and instead take this girl’s hand and follow her into a life that many would describe as being filled with pain and suffering. Why?”

 

Because he hated England, as Lee hated England he too hated England, he’d taken her own hatred and contempt and burned it into his own so that their thoughts on the place almost matched entirely…

 

But no, it was more than that, he realized the nidaime wasn’t asking him if he hated England or not, but instead, why did he come here. He could have gone anywhere, in theory, on leaving the orphanage he could have gone anywhere in the world. So why come here? Why decide to become a ninja?

 

“I… I want to become a ninja,” he started, “I want to be trained and…”

 

And he thought of Lee and even Minato, their easy smiles in the apartment, the way meaning seemed infused into their very lives and the unwitting glow that surrounded them, and the unwavering certainty that theirs was a life worth living.

 

“I want to protect something,” he paused, looked the nidaime straight in the eye, “I want to protect Konoha.”

 

“Interesting response,” the nidaime mused, “Although, you forgot terms like ‘precious people’ or ‘the will of fire’, but still, you know, I think the academy will make a Konoha shinobi of you yet, Ren.”

 

“I’ll remember that for next time,” Ren responded with a grin, the kind that would have had Mrs. Cole reaching for the belt, but just had the nidaime offering him a somewhat amused smile in response.

 

And there would be a next time, he’d crawl his way to the top here, surpass Namikaze Minato himself, perhaps even Eru Lee while he was at it, and he’d be the best damn ninja Konoha had ever seen.

 

He guaranteed it.

 

* * *

 

London, England, 1936

 

* * *

 

“Oh, goddammit!”

 

Fifteen-year-old Namikaze Minato, fourteen-year-old Eru Lee, fifteen-year-old Uzumaki Kushina, and eleven-year-old Ren collapsed onto the floor after having been hurtled through time and space itself as Lee, once again, started bleeding out even as Kushina, Minato, and Ren picked themselves up off the floor.

 

“I hate plant zombies!” Lee cried out, clutching at her ribcage in a scene that was painfully reminiscent to Ren, and one he could have lived without seeing given that this was his first mission as a chunin on a the overly powered, if younger, fuinjutsu specialist team.

 

“I hate plant zombies so damn much!” Lee cried out again, cursing as she poured chakra into the wound in an attempt to heal it (although, how this was even possible, when Ren had studied medical jutsu diligently and it went against everything he’d ever been taught, was anyone’s guess).

 

“Minato, I am sick and tired of this plant zombie apocalypse!” Lee insisted, finally breathing out as Ren reached over and took over for her.

 

“I’ll be sure to tell the plant zombies that the next time we run into them,” Minato noted rather drily, “And that I don’t appreciate them interrupting while Uzumaki and I are tampering with highly volatile seals.”

 

“Yeah, guys that’s all great, I hate zombie plants too, but I think we’ve got company.”

 

Everyone turned at Kushina’s words and found themselves blinking at a middle aged auburn-haired man in a hideously English, canary yellow suit, looking at them in complete and utter bewilderment.

 

For a moment, none of them said anything, Ren instead took this moment to inspect their surroundings and then found himself paling as it began to look eerily familiar.

 

Lee spared Ren a glanced, raised eyebrows, “Don’t tell me we’re in…”

 

“Wool’s orphanage,” Tom finished for her.

 

“…Shit,” Lee surmised, and for once, he actually agreed with her understatement of the century.

 

Well, none of them quite knew what to say after that. Or at least, not until the man held out the letter, towards Ren, and asked in clear English, “ _You wouldn’t happen to be a Mr. Tom Marvolo Riddle, would you?_ ”

 

Ren blinked, blinked again, then slowly, “ _Why do you ask?_ ”

 

And a… a spark entered the man’s eyes then, a tiny twinkle of blue, and he said, “ _Well, I have a letter addressed to a Mr. Tom Marvolo Riddle, inviting him to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry._ ”

 

There were no words, he felt his eyes turn, almost unwillingly towards Lee, who was mouthing a single word back at him as if this was the only explanation he needed, “Genjutsu.”

 

Only this time, he was halfway inclined to believe her.

 

But he had a bit more tact than that, if only a little, as he lamely responded, “ _You don’t say?_ ”

 

“ _Would you like to see it?_ ” the man asked, and here Ren paused, the man was… not a civilian yet a civilian at the same time, his stance was that of an aging man, but there was more than enough undisguised chakra in him to be wary of.

 

“ _You read it,_ ” Ren said instead, fingers shifting in front of him slightly, readying to begin hand seals at the slightest moment. The man, though, merely opened the letter, with enough warranted caution when facing four high ranking ninja, and began to read the most absurd thing Ren had ever heard in his life.

 

To the point where all four of them, Uzumaki more than proficient enough in English to understand the gist, were staring at the man in utter bewildered confusion, as Ren, a chunin of Konohagakure, was offered enrollment into England’s shinobi academy for sorcerers.

 

And then appeared to be legitimately waiting for some sort of an answer on Ren’s end, eyeing the blood dripping from Lee, the dark red stains on all of their clothing, and the weapons at their belt with a clear wariness…

 

“I’m bleeding too much to deal with this bullshit. I vote we force the nidaime to handle this,” Lee said, finally, when the silence had just stretched on too long for anyone to bear.

 

“Yeah, I second that decision,” Uzumaki responded, “You object, flakey bastard?”

 

Minato’s eyes narrowed at Uzumaki but then shrugged, “Well, these aren’t ideal circumstances anyways, and we’re hardly a team of diplomats.”

 

And with that, and a wild grin, Lee summoned the letter from the English shinobi’s grasp and offered him a wave, “ _Unfortunately, it seems we’ll have to consult our superiors before impressionable Ren-kun here can make any sort of decision, so, until then, ta.”_

 

(And Albus Dumbledore was left standing in an empty room, the blood on the floor the only hint that these four strangers had ever existed.)


	2. Chapter 2

It was a beautiful day outside, but then, even in winter Konoha’s days seemed more beautiful than England’s. London had always seemed to be covered by a gray mist of fog and smog. Rarely, when Ren had looked upwards through the orphanage window, had he been able to see the sky.

 

Konoha’s sky was almost always blue, by comparison, a few clouds here and there rolling through with the warm breeze. It had been more than a year now, but already he was starting to forget he had ever been English, well… Not really, never truly, even if he was fluent now (or close enough) and knew more than enough characters to get him through a day, even if he wore their clothes and had lost his accent, some part of him would always be English.

 

More English than Lee, even, who, besides her love of English literature and films (well, a good lot of them American films, apparently), really didn’t seem English at all.

 

Either way, Ren was now nine years old, in the academy, and through his own hard work and ingenuity was proving to be as great as he’d always hoped he would be, or rather, how he’d always thought he was in England but had a few moments of doubt in Konoha. Now though, he was looking like he was going to be ready to take his graduation exam in the Spring, just after he’d turn ten and only a year or so spent in the academy.

 

Even Namikaze Minato and Eru Lee hadn’t managed that.

 

Of course, Minato and Lee were both chunin, destroying the exams in an almost historic event, and now both were apprentices to high ranking jonin in the village. Minato to Jiraiya of the sanin, dragged all over the elemental nations for months at a time, and Lee to Hatake Sakumo, Konoha’s white wolf and famed ANBU captain.

 

The apartment often felt a bit too empty these days…

 

But Ren would catch up, he was catching up already, and he had to remember that they were four years older than him, and that they’d started a lot earlier than he had. More, he was graduating earlier than they had, and soon enough he’d be in the chunin exams himself and then they’d be the same rank. And if Minato and Lee passed their jonin exams before he passed his chunin exams, well, then… Then he’d catch up to them there too, younger, even!

 

Either way, as he walked down the street towards Lee’s preferred training field, he was more than looking forward to graduation.

 

He liked the academy, for the most part, it was far more practical than anything they’d taught him in England. Better instructed too, here Ren was encouraged to excel in all aspects, and was recognized for his own talents. That said, the people his age were… disappointing. Better than the orphans, certainly, but they lacked the raw power, finesse, and ingenuity of Lee and Minato and their few scattered friends.

 

He was born four years too late, he couldn’t help but think, because if he’d been in their class…

 

Well, it didn’t matter anyway, for all that sort of thinking he could be back wasting away in England, pushing Dennis down the stairs and just waiting for the day he could leave that God forsaken place.

 

No need to pine after what ifs.

 

And there she was, just passed the red bridge where Ren now stopped to watch her as she exchanged blows with Hatake Sakumo, they both moved like lightning, Lee having the finesse and strength of a jonin already and as she moved it reminded him of a ballerina, the flow and grace with which she moved, her pale limbs thin and lithe, and her eyes…

 

He felt a flush rise to his cheeks, moved his gaze instead towards the hokage monument, always a safe place to look while he gathered himself. He wished… He wished he was better at this, he had always thought he was unreadable in England but maybe only to civilians, he hated being such an open book with his heart written right on his face.

 

Of course, there was something about Lee that…

 

His eyes darted back to her, watching as she flew backwards, flopping backwards onto the grass as Hatake Sakumo smiled down at her and offered her a hand to pick her back up. And she smiled back up, in Ren’s direction, but not at him at all…

 

(And it burned him, that if Namikaze Minato was standing where Ren was standing now, instead of in Wind or Mist or whatever godforsaken corner of the continent he was on, her eyes would have moved to him by instinct.)

 

Finally, her eyes slid to him, the smile grew and she offered him a casual wave even as she stretched, “Hey, Ren, what are you doing here?”

 

Ren paused, willed himself not to flush again, and instead walked forward willing a confidence into himself that he didn’t possess at the moment, “I just came from the academy… I won my taijutsu spar.”

 

And that, perhaps pathetically, was worth more than he’d like. Taijutsu by far was Ren’s worst discipline, ninjutsu, genjutsu, now those he excelled far beyond academy level, but taijutsu was alien and foreign to him and too often he found himself pinned to the mat underneath some asshole Hyuga.

 

And for Ren, who had never been terrible at anything in his life, the feeling was unbearable.

 

“Oh, that’s…. great, Ren,” Lee said, looking unenthusiastic but attempting to be supportive. He gritted his teeth at the sight, oh how he hated that look, that reminder that she never saw him for what he was only ever… Only ever Tom Marvolo Riddle, English untrained orphan civilian, who thought his tricks on civilians were something grand.

 

And now only Ren, Konohagakure orphan and academy student, who was so proud of winning an academy taijutsu spar.

 

“Right, well, as you can see, I lost my taijutsu spar of the day,” Lee said with a too cheerful grin, the kind she never gave to Minato.

 

“You’re improving by leaps and bounds though,” Hatake said as he smiled at her, “Nowhere near your ninjutsu and genjutsu abilities, of course, but you’re getting dangerous out there, Lee.”

 

“Taijutsu is so tedious,” Lee said with a sigh, and Hatake let out a laugh at that, ruffled a hand through her hair with an almost paternal affection.

 

“Are you done then, Lee?” Ren asked, almost anxiously, it’d been too long since he and Lee had been alone without Lee having to run off on a mission or to train with Hatake. That’s all she seemed to do these days.

 

“Well, I suppose we could be,” Hatake mused, “Although, Lee, I’d planned on inviting you to dinner, and I suppose your little roommate as well.”

 

Little roommate, was that how he saw Ren? The little roommate, the little brother, if even that? And just a tacked-on invitation out of pity…

 

“Of course, shishou, if you’re paying then I’m coming,” Lee said and then waved a hand at Ren, “And I’m sure Ren wouldn’t mind either.”

 

Ren minded very much but… But then she looked at him, and all he could do was dumbly nod along, and then looked up to see Hatake Sakumo catching his eye and looking at him with some inscrutable expression.

 

“Right, well then, I’ll head home until then, six?” Lee asked, stretching one final time and beginning to walk away.

 

“Six is fine, Lee,” Hatake said back to her, and both he and Ren watched as Lee slowly walked, until she was out of earshot.

 

“You know, Ren-kun, she’s a bit old for you.”

 

“What?” Ren’s head whipped towards the man.

 

“Four years, at your age, is quite the difference, particularly on her end,” Hatake explained with a sigh and then a more contemplative look as he said, “And you must know how Minato feels about her and how she feels about Minato.”

 

“No, I don’t know!” Ren spat out, feeling his face redden, and the man held up his hands in a gesture of peace.

 

“I’m not saying it’s hopeless, Ren-kun, just that you should recognize what kind of a battle you’re entering,” then, with a wink of a gray eye, “You looked like you could use some advice.”

 

He looked…

 

Turning on his heel, shoving his hands into his pockets, Ren thought that he had one more name to add to the list of those he would kill once he was an unstoppable S-ranked jonin death machine.

 

And he bitterly tried to ignore Hatake Sakumo’s entertained laughter from behind him.

 

* * *

 

You’d think, that being invited to the home of a clan head inside of a true clan compound, and one of Konoha’s most revered jonin, would mean that the food would be something other than takeout from the local barbeque that Ren and Lee had pretty much every other week (when Ren managed to whine enough that one could not live simply on ramen).

 

Not that Ren had ever had a home-cooked meal, as such, the orphanage in England had rarely served anything remotely edible (but, well, when you were an orphan you took what you were given and tried not to let it eat away at you). In Konoha, he wasn’t necessarily given food, but he was still a poor and clanless orphan still in the academy, and for whatever reason, even with their promotion to chunin, Minato and Lee were unbelievable cheapskates who would much rather spend their money on weaponry or high-quality ink and paper than on food.

 

That, and along with Uzumaki Kushina, Lee and Minato appeared to be hopeless ramen addicts. And, since Ren lived with them, and the meager earnings he made from translation work for the nidaime and the stipend from the state for being an academy student, he generally had to eat ramen too.

 

Still, there they were, Ren, Lee, Hatake Sakumo, and his son Hatake Kakashi, eating local barbeque takeout at a small table in his kitchen (rather the grand, unused one, that rested in some other room, designed to fit far more than a mere four people). And no one seemed to see anything wrong with this.

 

Hatake and Lee were chatting away, completely unconcerned even while Ren picked at his food in some annoyance, and then, Ren noticed that Kakashi was staring straight at him. Ren had rarely run into Hatake’s son, mostly because Ren only occasionally ran into Hatake himself and never in a casual situation like this, usually only while training Lee.

 

The boy had to be only about three or four at the most, yet there he was, sitting at the table and picking at his food, a sharp and undisguisable raw intelligence in his eyes as he took in the world around him, as he took in Ren…

 

“Is Kakashi really starting the academy, shishou?” Lee asked, motioning to Kakashi whose large gray eyes now flicked to her, jolting into Ren’s own thoughts, “I didn’t think they accepted anyone under five.”

 

“Well, he wants to,” Hatake said with a shrug and a sigh, “And honestly, he is ready for it, maybe a little too ready for it, if I think about it…”

 

“But he’s…” Ren started, motioning to Kakashi, to his tiny stature, Ren’s face flushing… But, well, most children started the academy at six, Lee and Minato had started at six, Ren was the only one who started at the hideous age of nine, desperately catching up to his peers…

 

Kakashi merely silently looked at Ren with raised silver eyebrows, then calmly, too calmly, continued to eat his dinner with all the serenity of a monk. And it was… Somehow, without having said a single word, it was the most insulting action anyone had ever taken against Ren in his life.

 

“Hey now, I actually have seen Kakashi in action, and he’s very good… He might actually be around your level, Ren,” Lee said, completely oblivious to Ren’s horror and Kakashi’s silently pleased serenity as he continued to eat his food.

 

“My level?!” Ren cried out.

 

“Well, Ren, no offense, but you are an academy student,” Lee said, unspoken being that Ren was performing at the level of one right now, or maybe a genin at best, of course four-year-old Hatake Kakashi would be able to keep up with that.

 

“I am the best in my class!” Ren responded, flushing desperately, and if this was only a year ago he knew he would have tried something desperately stupid then like lighting Lee’s hair on fire, as it was he had learned some restraint.

 

Well, restraint with people far beyond his own power level, at least, and he’d learned through several painful encounters that Eru Lee easily outclassed him and almost anyone in Konoha.

 

“Not at taijutsu, you’re not, doesn’t that Hyuga branch member make you eat dirt like every other day or something?” Lee asked, so casually, without any regard to Ren’s own feelings or his own abilities, and why, why did she always overlook him at every opportunity? Sometimes, Ren got the feeling that she saw him at around the same level as her hideously untalented teammate, who she had gone around for years calling Dead Last.

 

“No!” Ren cried out before adding triumphantly, “He didn’t today, and he’s not going to ever again!”

 

“That’s great,” Lee responded somewhat lazily before motioning to Kakashi again, “Either way, Kakashi is as eerily intelligent of a child as you ever were, and, like shishou said, more than ready for the academy of all things.”

 

A four-year-old, Lee was comparing Ren, who should be being compared against the likes of Lee herself or Namikaze Minato, to a four-year-old who wasn’t even in the academy. And the four-year-old in question, looking across from Ren, offered him a sly, smug, smile.

 

Oh, Ren was going to destroy that little freak of nature. Let him enter the academy, let him try, and Ren would make him regret the day he was ever born.

 

* * *

 

After the dinner, and after a few weeks where Lee left on another extended mission with Hatake, and it was just Ren and the empty apartment, he told himself he was overexaggerating.

 

Hatake Kakashi was four, true, and that was two years younger than your average first year academy brat, but he was also the son of a clan head and even then, he was still four. Maybe a bit more advanced than the six-year-olds Ren would pass by in the academy, toddling about shouting about becoming ninja, but hardly anything to be concerned about.

 

Honestly, he’d thought to himself at one point, it was kind of embarrassing to declare war against a four-year-old of all things. Sometimes, Ren couldn’t help but look back on his own actions or words or thoughts, and cringe a little. He really had to work on his temper, or pride, or something, because getting offended by a four-year-old and Lee’s attention to said four-year-old was far more embarrassing than a four-year-old entering the academy.

 

Hatake Kakashi was no Namikaze Minato, after all.

 

Besides, the date of Ren’s inevitable graduation was soon approaching, and there was a large difference between someone just starting the academy and someone who was about to graduate as top of their class.

 

So, for a few weeks, even when Ren and Kakashi passed each other on the way to the academy, Ren offered the boy his own silently serene smile (which would often cause a look of exasperation and discontent to appear on the boy’s face), and they would go their separate ways without saying a word to one another, Ren to the classroom with eleven and twelve-year-olds and Kakashi to sit and rot among his six-year-old peers.

 

Then, of course, came the terrible morning that Hatake Kakashi, smaller by two feet than everyone else in the class, was ushered into the doorway of Ren’s classroom, offered them all a small bow, and said that he was very pleased to be joining their class, as he had, apparently, decimated the academy curriculum, and now was on the same track to early graduation that Ren himself was.

 

But as a four-year-old.

 

And then, that four-year-old upstart, proceeded to score the same on exams as Ren, both earning hundred percent on just about anything given, to match Ren in his ninjutsu (though Ren still slaughtered him in genjutsu), and more, in taijutsu… In taijutsu, after crawling his way to the top of his class in the subject, Ren was promptly beaten half to death, by a four-year-old, daily.

 

Naturally, in response to this, Ren had decided to do what Lee had affectionately coined ‘uber train’. If he wasn’t translating for the nidaime or meeting with Lee, then Ren was training, working through katas again and again and the flow of chakra into his hands and feet, working harder than he’d ever worked in his life in whatever unoccupied training field he could find.

 

And if the nidaime looked at him with pitying raised eyebrows every now and then, and even went so far to say that putting yourself in the hospital as an academy student would be embarrassing and Ren should be ashamed of himself for edging this line, it didn’t matter.

 

Because losing was not an option, Ren had to win, but not only win, he had to slaughter.

 

However, sitting in his apartment now, ice packs from the fridge tied all over his body, trying and failing to concentrate on the pile of books that still needed translating (which, he still translated slower than Minato or Lee, not always knowing the right word or character or even context to translate things over into), as Lee sat next to him and was diligently working her way through something called “The Shining”.

 

She set down her pen, sighed, looked at the books then looked at him, “We are not going to finish this in time, not without Minato.”

 

“We’ll be fine,” Ren said, “We don’t need Minato.”

 

And he meant that, in every sense of the word. Sometimes he missed Minato’s presence in the apartment and Ren’s life in general, but other times, other times there was a sense of relief that finally, finally Ren would not have to stand in Minato’s shadow and could be seen in his own right.

 

“Well, you’re getting basically nothing done,” Lee pointed out, “I mean, Jesus, Ren, what are they doing to you in the academy? I have no memories of it being nearly that intense.”

 

The academy wasn’t, well, Hatake Kakashi was a little demon in their spars, he used his height and small size to his advantage, and every hit was not only fast, but also expertly placed to bring his opponent down.

 

“Well, I guess it’s changed since you were there,” Ren said stiffly, and surprisingly, Lee seemed to seriously consider this.

 

“Yes, I imagine it would,” she finally said, and with a sigh she looked out the window and towards the hokage monument, “War is coming, everyone knows it, the war had only just ended when Minato and I graduated… It seems we will always be at war with Eastasia.”

 

And for a moment Ren wondered if that was what made the difference. Minato and Lee hadn’t graduated late by any means, but they hadn’t graduated early either, and while in their first chunin exams they had been promoted, Lee had already mentioned that it seemed like both of them would be taking their jonin exams rather soon. Ren, by comparison, was flying through the academy along with Hatake Kakashi, and that was a dark omen of bloodshed to come.

 

Ren remembered, as he looked at Lee’s face then, that he had not been here for the infamous second war. All he knew, was that because of it, the entire village of Uzushio and the Uzumaki clan that had lived in there, had been wiped out.

 

“Either way, soon, I don’t think we’ll have much time to set aside for translation,” Lee said, “As it is I’m barely in, and Minato’s god knows where at the moment, and you look like you have one foot in the grave… We should bring Kakashi in on this.”

 

Ren stiffened, breathed out stiffly, and then added, “Hatake, what help could he possibly be?”

Lee, however, didn’t even seem to notice, as she continued to offer the reasons why Hatake Kakashi was just as legitimate to work alongside Lee, Ren, and Minato as anyone else, “You know he’s fluent, don’t you? Not to mention that he can write and read English quite well even without practice. Plus, he seems to be bored out of his goddamn mind half the time, I think the academy is driving him insane, this will be good for him. And for a D-rank, it’s not that terrible of work.”

 

And there was nothing he could say to that, no response he could possibly give to put Kakashi, not even here, back into his place. All he could do was sit there, hold it in, and dream of the day he would kick that little brat’s face in.

 

The idea though, of sitting with that brat over a pile of Lee’s books, Lee and Minato both off on missions…

 

“…Ren, you do know you’re leaking Orochimaru levels of killing intent right now, don’t you?” Lee asked and Ren flushed desperately.

 

“Right, I, sorry I was thinking about… the orphanage,” he finished lamely, but Lee seemed to accept this easily enough, which… Which, hurt, actually, not that he wanted her to know how seriously he took Hatake Kakashi as a rival, but that Lee hadn’t thought to pay more attention and see through him.

 

“Ah, England, a country after my own heart,” Lee offered with a smile that seemed nostalgic at a glance but was really more amused than anything.

 

“Lee, you won’t… In the Spring…” Ren paused, stopped, and she was looking at him, looking at him and smiling and, “You won’t be on a mission when I graduate, will you?”

 

“Well, duty is duty,” Lee said, “But, I will do everything within my power to be there, front row and center, for you and Kakashi.”

 

In the middle of that Ren had smiled, a relieved and hopeful smile, but then, whatever calm he’d had shattered completely. Not for him, no, for him and Kakashi, as if they were one and the same, in the same category of the little brothers she never had.

 

Ren stood suddenly, setting his own book on the table and stripping the ice packs off himself, ignoring the protest of his muscles and the trembling of his own diminished chakra, “I’m going out.”

 

“Out?” Lee asked, looking out the window at the darkening sky, “To do what?”

 

He didn’t answer though, he just walked out and slammed the door shut behind him, then kept walking, and standing in the training field, creating a clone of himself to offer at least some semblance of an opponent, he replaced the face of the clone instead with some hellish mix of Namikaze Minato’s and Hatake Kakashi’s.

 

And even as his muscles began to scream and the edges of his vision grew black he kept going, striking forward again, and again, chakra flooding to his hands then to his fingers then to his toes as he pushed for more speed and more power.

 

And he did this until, without warning, he was swaying, the sky seeming to tilt sideways and his feet sliding out from under him, and the world went dark.

 

And then, to his complete and utter shame, he did that very thing the nidaime had told him not to do, he had over trained as an academy student, to the point of chakra exhaustion, and found himself waking up to the blurry sight of Senju Tsunade looking down at him in disapproval.

 

“Kid, you are too young to be doing stupid shit like this to yourself,” good god, there wasn’t even a preamble as she stood over him and glared, “This is the kind of bullshit I expect from ANBU operatives twice your age who are too stupid to remember when enough is enough.”

 

“I…”

 

“There is no excuse, you could possibly give me, that would explain why weeks of overtraining yourself to the point of chakra exhaustion, for the academy, would possibly be a good idea,” then, seeing Ren opening his mouth again, she added, “None.”

 

Then, still without letting him get in a word edgewise, flipping through his chart she said, “Congratulations, dumbass, your extracurricular training has just landed you in here for a week.”

 

“A week?!” Ren exclaimed, “I can’t…”

 

“Oh yes you can, and you will, and maybe this will teach you to lay off killing yourself,” then, not even looking at him, she muttered, “God knows I do not need another workaholic who puts himself in here every six months.”

 

“But I…”

 

“But yes,” Tsunade interjected, then whacked him across the back of his head with her clip board, “You are not going to become one of my stupid regulars, taking up my valuable time, because you don’t know when to quit! Do you understand me, Ren-san? The only time I ever, ever, want to see you in this hospital again, is for a regular exam, or because shit got real in the field.”

 

“Yes, Senju-sama,” he said through gritted teeth.

 

“Good, now, you’ve got a visitor,” Tsunade said, motioning towards the door, “Your cute little girlfriend, Eru Lee, who is somehow saner than you.”

 

Then, pausing, looking down at him as if a thought struck her, she added, “And if you’re doing all this to get the girl, I have to tell you, Ren, nobody likes a stupid jackass who trains himself too hard.”

 

“I’m not…” Ren shouted after her, but she was already out the door, and Lee walking inside, except… Except it wasn’t only Lee. There, standing with Lee and walking in like he belonged there, was none other than Hatake Kakashi.

 

“So, Ren, I hear you gave yourself chakra exhaustion by trying to impersonate Balboa Rocky,” Lee said, blinking as she looked down at him, and looking as if she was trying to think of what she could possibly add to those words.

 

He had no idea who Balboa Rocky was, but Ren had the feeling that this wasn’t a compliment, or that even if it was he wouldn’t appreciate the comparison.

 

“Well, either way, I thought I should come and see you,” Lee said before looking at the walls then looking back at him, “I feel for you, Ren, the hospital is not the place to be.”

 

Then she pushed a package into his hands, and it was… His notes from the academy along with one of Lee’s handwritten books, but this one actually familiar to him, “The Count of Monte Cristo”.

 

Flipping it open and seeing Lee’s familiar handwriting and her sporadic sketches, he couldn’t help but crack a smile, even while everything still hurt.

 

“I figured you might like something to read while you’re stuck in here,” Lee said with a smile before nodding towards Kakashi, “And Kashi picked up your notes from class.”

 

He and Kakashi simply stared at one another, Ren making no move to thank the boy, and Kakashi just smiling unnervingly back. Lee’s eyes darted between both of them, but then, she seemed to decide that she didn’t care and just sighed.

 

“Either way, I’ll try to stop in at least once a day, if I can,” she stood then, took Tom’s hand and offered it a comforting squeeze, then said, “Take care of yourself, Ren.”

 

Then, then she was walking out, leaving him and Hatake Kakashi behind. With as much noise made as possible, scraping the chair in the room against the floor tiles, Kakashi sat down next to him, stubby little legs dangling off the edge and not touching the floor, and for a few silent moments simply held Ren’s eyes as Ren glared back.

 

Finally, Hatake Kakashi said, “Perhaps, Ren-kun, you should simply admit that you are not as good as I am. Your current delusions don’t seem to be good for your health.”

 

“What?” Ren asked, not out of any real sense out of question, but that Kakashi, who had never truly spoken to him, would use these as his first words.

 

Kakashi just offered a polite, almost Lee-like, smile back, “I mean, that clearly your overtraining is compensating for something, Ren-kun. Perhaps I was wrong to assume that something was your pitiful displays of taijutsu.”

 

“My displays of taijutsu are not…”

 

“Even Namikaze Minato, the politest of us all, would not hesitate to admit that your taijutsu needs… work,” Hatake said, and then offered Ren something of a pitying look, “I almost feel bad about how I’m going to wipe the floor with you at graduation.”

 

Shadows began to gather in the room, the glass on the window shook, Ren’s voice became frosty as he leaned towards his guest, “Don’t try me you little shit.”

 

Only, only just about then he felt whatever control he had slip away as his chest stiffened and a great pain tore through him, an Kakashi merely watched with raised eyebrows.

 

“Yes, that would be the chakra exhaustion kicking in,” Hatake said mildly, like he was discussing the weather, and had not in the least been intimidated by Ren, “Do remember, you were put in here for a reason.”

 

It was like, it was like watching Billy back in England, only in some nightmarish hell reality where Billy suddenly, instead of being an adorable idiot with a vulnerable rabbit, had the ability to kick Ren into the dirt. And a Billy, who, instead of being dimwitted, appeared to be alarmingly close to Ren’s level, “Don’t pretend that you’re smarter than I am!”

 

“I don’t have to,” Hatake responded, and dammit, was Ren really losing a verbal argument to a four-year-old? True, the brat was almost five, but that did not help things especially since Ren was already ten now.

 

“Well, Ren, it’s been fun,” Kakashi finally said, hopping down from the chair and giving Ren a cheerful smile, “I look forward to kicking the ever-loving shit out of you at graduation.”

 

Ren smiled cheerfully, too cheerfully, back, “As do I, Hatake-kun.”

 

* * *

 

It did not snow often in Konoha’s winter, but occasionally, on a night like this one, small flakes would descend from the sky and stick to the ground, if only for a little while. Ren tilted his head up, looking up at the flakes, likely the last ones they’d see after Spring arrived, and thought to himself that all things considered, perhaps it was a perfect night.

 

He was dressed in second-hand traditional wear, bought from all the money earned from D-ranks and his stipend which hadn’t been spent on food or equipment. And for what he could afford right now, it looked good enough, and the dark colors went far enough in disguising the worn quality of the fabric.

 

And with Namikaze Minato out of the village and graduation around the corner, this was probably the best chance Ren was going to get, or at least, so he told himself as he stood at the gates of the Hatake compound.

 

With trepidation, he knocked on the door, Hatake Sakumo opening and looking down at him, and then continuing to look.

 

“Good evening, Hatake-sama, I was wondering if Lee had finished training today,” Ren said with a small bow.

 

The man looked down at him, and… And there was a flash of pity, of all things, in his eyes and then a sigh, “Sure, Ren-kun, we were just finishing up for the night anyway, I’m sure Lee will be glad to see you. Come on in, please.”

Ren stepped in, nudged off his sandals, and was ushered into a small living room while Hatake Sakumo went out to fetch Lee, likely from the compound’s training room or else the gardens outside.

 

“Don’t tell me you think you’re going on a date with nee-san, of all things.”

 

Ren looked over and there was Hatake Kakashi, slouching against a wall, dressed in casual almost civilian clothing, and looking at Ren with disbelieving raised eyebrows.

 

“I don’t see how that’s your business,” Ren stated politely, or as politely as he could when talking to Hatake, who really was a freak of nature who seemed like a much older child stuck in his four-year-old body, “Or, how you’re her little brother, of all things.”

 

“Normally,” Hatake said, “I think I’d be offended, but Ren-kun, I think I just find this kind of sad.”

 

“And I find your desperate utterance of ‘nee-san’ rather sad,” Ren replied with a smile, “Did you always want an older sister, Hatake-kun?”

 

Hatake merely offered him a small, amused smile, “Ah, Ren-kun, of the pair of us I think you’ll find it is yourself who takes such slights far more seriously. Besides, at least I’m not under the delusion that I can attract someone four years older than me.”

 

“You just don’t know when to stop, do you?” Ren asked, eyes glittering dangerously, but Hatake Kakashi just stared right back, inviting death with that lopsided, amused, smile.

 

He’d say more but Lee walked in at that moment, and even covered in sweat and dirt she was still beautiful, inside of the battlefield and outside of it.

 

“Oh, hey, Ren, what are you doing here?” Then she looked at him again, “And going all out with the hakama and kimono…”

 

“Well, I, I wanted to see if you wanted to go to dinner, with me,” Ren said, desperately ignoring Hatake Kakashi’s raised eyebrows across from him, “Somewhere new, not too expensive but…”

 

Lee looked down at herself then across at him, “Will I have to change?”

 

“I um… Preferably?” the place he’d had in mind wasn’t too expensive by any means, but even though this was a ninja village, it was one of those restaurants that didn’t cater totally to ninja, and thus had some preference to how their clientele dressed.

 

And how many bloodstains they had on their clothes when they walked in the door.

 

Lee sighed, “Can we go somewhere I don’t have to change?”

 

“I… sure,” Ren said, deflating slightly, but having the suspicion that an answer of no would mean no dinner with Lee at all.

 

“Great, we’ll get ramen,” Lee said, seeming to pay no mind that now Ren himself, was hideously overdressed for ramen of all things. Ramen, which they had just about every day anyways.

 

Dinner itself, perhaps predictably, went even worse. They just sat there in their both, Ren overdressed and horribly embarrassed, having no idea what to say to her at all, and Lee looking at him and just staring silently back, like she was waiting for him to say something.

 

And she… She never really saw him at all, did she?

 

Before he could say anything like this aloud though, demand she look at him, really look, she stood, looked off into the distance, a grin growing on her face and light returning to her eyes, and offered a short, “Sorry, Ren, I have to go.”

 

Then she was off, sprinting down the street towards Konoha’s entrance, leaving Ren behind in the dust as he stumbled after her.

 

“Lee, wait!”

 

But she was already gone, and his sprinting after her, a difficult task in unfamiliar and formal clothing, took longer than he would have liked. All the same, all the same as he rounded the corner he was somehow not surprised but what he saw, and yet at the same time it was like an unexpected knife to the back.

 

Because there was Namikaze Minato and his shishou, Jiraiya, walking in through the gates, Minato smiling down at Lee and Lee smiling back up at him (Minato having grown more than a few inches out on the road), and Ren, standing there in the middle of the street, everybody’s fool.

 

* * *

 

“So, you’re back.”

 

Ren had waited up long into the night, still dressed in formal wear, waiting for Namikaze Minato to finally make his appearance, and then, waiting for Minato to confront him after Lee had gone to bed for the night.

 

And, as always, Namikaze Minato did not disappoint as he sat across from Ren with a fresh poured cup of tea for himself. He was still in his chunin uniform, dark blues and greens, the chunin vest, a large change from what Ren remembered him wearing when he had been a genin.

 

“Yes, for a little while, at least,” Minato responded with that easy smile that always seemed so genuine, “Are you disappointed, Ren?”

 

“Frankly, yes,” Ren replied, but Minato appeared to pay no mind, only quietly nodded.

 

“A pity, I missed you while out on the road, even if I missed Lee and everyone else too,” Minato said, and then, quietly, “Have you made any friends, Ren?”

 

“That’s not any of your business!” Ren hissed back, because frankly, he didn’t need friends, he had never needed friends, not really. He’d always been fine on his own, and even now he wasn’t really on his own, he had Lee and Minato to some extent. That was more than enough.

 

“I worry about you sometimes,” Minato said with a shrug, “You take everything so seriously… I heard you’re going to graduate soon, congratulations, Ren. If I’m here for graduation I’ll make sure to watch.”

 

“Thank you,” Ren said quietly, if stiffly, but Minato just seemed amused by this if anything.

 

He was always amused by Ren.

 

Finally, Ren said, “You know, I heard you asked Lee on a date tonight.”

 

Ren’s eyes widened and if he hadn’t gained some self-control over the last year he would have done something truly drastic. As it was, he swallowed, and calmly replied, “Hatake?”

 

“Your outfit,” Minato responded with a smile, motioning to Ren’s dark kimono.

 

Then, eyeing Ren, he continued, “I just wanted to let you know, Ren, that when I come back, whenever that is… I’m not going to take it easy on you, just because you’re younger.”

 

“What?”

 

“I’d say I’m sorry, but I’m not really sorry,” Minato continued with a shrug, “And we can’t both date Lee at the same time.”

 

Minato, Namikaze Minato, orphan child of two merchants from Wind who had immigrated to Konohagakure and on the way were attacked by bandits, hailed as the next rising star of his generation along with Eru Lee, apprentice to Jiraiya of the sannin, charismatic and friendly, and now after Lee, and likely to win her…

 

Why was it that Namikaze Minato had everything Ren had never known he had wanted, without even seeming to try?

 

“And what makes you so confident?” Ren asked, “After all, it’s not as if you’re ever around.”

 

Minato had the gall to laugh, actually laugh at that, then, with a contented sigh, “True enough, Ren, you have a point there. Still, I have faith.”

 

“Faith,” Ren sneered back.

 

“Faith, and, as Uzumaki Kushina frequently reminds me, a very pretty face,” Minato added with a smile, and then, taking a sip of his tea, “Still, no hard feelings, Ren?”

 

And Ren all but hissed out, his eyes burning, fists clenched and knuckles white, “No, Minato, no hard feelings.”

 

* * *

 

He could almost hear one of Lee’s favored, 1980’s, strange, terrible music, playing in the background as he finished the written portion of his exam, the basic clone stage, and the henge. Hatake Kakashi, of course, passing with just as much exemplary ability as Ren himself had. Now preparing himself for the final spar with Hatake Kakashi, and wipe the smirk off that little bastard’s face, the words rang in his ears.

 

_“Try to be best ‘cause you’re only a man and a man’s gatta learn to take it.”_

 

Although the little bastard wasn’t smirking now, no, right now he was eyeing Ren up and down, sizing up his weaknesses and strengths as he did every time before they sparred, for however good as Hatake Kakashi was he did take these things quite seriously.

 

_“Try to believe when the going gets rough, that you gotta hang tough to make it.”_

Their instructor motioned for them to face one another, to get into their starting positions, Ren’s eyes focused on Hatake Kakashi even as he moved into that now naturally balanced stance that had been achieved after too many hours of practice.

 

_“History repeats itself, try and you’ll succeed. Never doubt that you’re the one and you can have your dream.”_

Hatake moved into his typical stance, legs bent and angled, arms outstretched and ready to jab Ren in the face even while his legs were prepared to kick out. Then, as they stared at each other, as the classroom itself seemed to melt away, there was the call to start.

 

And before Hatake Kakashi could even blink, Ren brought his leg up to crush Hatake’s jaw from underneath and threw him off balance, the boy stumbling backwards in a slight daze.

 

_“You’re the best around, nothing is gonna ever keep you down. You’re the best, around, nothing is gonna ever keep you down.”_

Kakashi was up quickly though, jabbing out at Ren’s legs and forcing him backwards, and then pressing his advantage forward and punching Ren right under his ribcage. Ren wheezed, hunched over slightly, but still quick enough to duck out of Kakashi’s way as another blow came in hard and fast towards his face.

 

_“Fight till the end ‘cause your life will depend on the strength you have inside you. Gotta be proud, standing out in the crowd, when the odds of the game defy you.”_

 

Straightening, moving backwards on the defensive, raising his arms to block Kakashi’s fast moving punches and backwards to avoid his legs, he waited for his opportunity to step forward and finally use Kakashi’s miniature size to his disadvantage, by using his greater reach to kick Kakashi in the side of his ribs and fling him to the side.

 

Then, before he could he could straight himself and regain his stance, kicking out again to force him to the floor.

 

_“Try your best to win them all and one-day time will tell, when you’re the one that’s standing there, you’ve reached the final bell.”_

 

Unfortunately, that appeared to be exactly what Kakashi had been waiting for, he grabbed Ren’s legs between his hands, yanked him forward and threw him off balance, and with far too much chakra for a spar, punched Ren in the face, and everything, at first was off balance, and then, then it was dark…

 

And Ren, when he woke up, was given a silver gleaming headband, and placed second in his class to the five-year-old genin Hatake Kakashi and far above the rest of his peers, even those who had previously given him a run for his money in taijutsu.

 

Still, after it was all over, and Ren was seated underneath the tree in the front of the academy after having waved off Lee and Minato for a little while, waiting until it was time to go out for celebratory dinner with them and even the Hatakes, he found himself, well, not as upset as he thought he’d be. Honestly, other than Hatake Kakashi, he wasn’t too eager to be paired off with anyone in his class, or rather, put on a dysfunctional trio of a genin team.

 

Hatake, in that sense, was going to get screwed over too, perhaps more so, given his age and the fact that he had destroyed their other classmates. Ren might be unpopular, because he was a younger foreign stand-offish civilian born upstart, but Hatake Kakashi…

 

Well, Ren doubted he’d be fortunate in his teammates.

 

In the end, perhaps, it was not Hatake Kakashi that would be the true problem, but instead Namikaze Minato, who in his own way, threatened them both with his connection to Lee…

 

Still, as he stood and began to make his way back to the apartment to meet with Lee and Minato, the next time he got a chance, he’d enjoy ripping Hatake Kakashi to shreds.


	3. Chapter 3

It was almost his birthday again, or at least, as far as he could tell. Lee had never been clear exactly how the calendar in Konoha lined up with the calendar in England. Actually, she’d been rather unclear where Konoha was in relation to England period.

 

All the maps he’d ever seen of the elemental nations had never had a hint of England, Europe, or anything familiar on them. Similarly, every map he’d once seen in England, had never had a sign of the elemental nations. He had the feeling that Lee knew the reason for this, more or less, but she’d always been rather tight lipped, even to Ren.

 

Either way, as Ren who was once Tom Marvolo Riddle looked out the window of the Senju compound onto the brisk December morning that clung to Konoha, he found himself noting that he would soon be eleven, and that it had almost been three years since he’d seen London.

 

He didn’t really think about that much, how much time it had been and how far he was away from… well, not home, London had never really been home even then, but that place he had once lived and perhaps always expected to live. To be honest there wasn’t really time to brood away over it, and not really a need to either. He didn’t relate to himself anymore, or rather, he didn’t relate to Tom Marvolo Riddle, the English painfully civilian orphan.

 

That Tom Riddle, after all, would still have been in the orphanage at that point, doing whatever it was Ren had done to occupy his time. Likely getting exorcised by Mrs. Cole for all he knew. And that was a fact he could barely even comprehend.

 

Ren, by comparison, had not only graduated the academy and become a genin apprentice, but had even just recently passed his chunin exams. Not just an apprentice to anyone either, but to the nidaime himself.

 

Maybe it shouldn’t have been a surprise, he saw the nidaime more than most people, and way more than any academy student he’d ever heard of. Either way though, when the man had appeared in Ren’s classroom along with all the other jonin senseis and announced that he’d decided to take Ren as an apprentice, somehow, Ren had never really seen it coming.

 

And while the academy had been miles better than the orphanage, and he’d never regretted living with Lee and even Minato for that matter, and he’d felt more himself than he ever had in England, it was becoming Senju Tobirama-sama’s apprentice, his first student since his resurrection, that somehow made everything click into place. That this, this above all other things, learning from a man who had once been hokage, who had practically built the village himself and set the standard for all other hidden villages to follow, was what he had been looking for without even realizing it when Eru Lee had appeared in his bedroom.

 

The nidaime somehow more than lived up to his reputation, Ren had been ready to be disappointed, as he’d always been, but this time at least he wasn’t. He didn’t think he ever would be, as the man helped Ren in refining his basic fuinjutsu and start on medical jutsus as well. He seemed to know everything about every discipline, thoroughly knowledgeable even in realms where he steadfastly would claim he wasn’t an expert. More, the way he held himself, the respect others gave to him, it was everything Ren himself wanted to be when he became an adult.

 

(And unlike Ren’s sometimes bitter rivalry with Namikaze Minato, there wasn’t any underlying tension, the need to be and surpass what Namikaze Minato was at this very moment.)

 

More, the man respected Ren, had always respected Ren and seen more than just his potential but everything he could offer in the very moment.

 

In other words, Ren, who had never respected anyone or anything in England, had enormous respect for both the nidaime hokage and even his older brother the shodaime. Although, to be fair, Ren didn’t quite get Senju Hashirama and he didn’t think he ever really would. He kind of, in a strange way that he couldn’t really explain, reminded Ren of Lee except… Even more ineffable and ten times more emotional.

 

However, the shodaime had once told him that Ren reminded him of his brother, Senju Tobirama, when he was younger. And that… He had been grateful, but also glad that the shodaime had said it to him then, rather than earlier, because when he first arrived the magnitude of that compliment would have been entirely lost on him.

 

Konoha, after all, had taught Ren that while he himself was not to be passed over, there were also great men worth admiring.

 

They’d had no real missions outside of the village so far, a few here and there, but all easily within the land of fire and mostly escorting missions that took wealthy merchants into Konoha itself. It probably was to be expected, now that a third shinobi war had broken out, and even though it was in the early stages yet, already things had changed. There weren’t too many C-ranked missions around anymore, or at least, not as many people willing to pay the increased prices for them.

 

More, though Ren wouldn’t have wanted it any other way, there was something of a price for having the nidaime hokage as a master. The nidaime, along with the shodaime, and the kyuubi jinchuuriki Uzumaki Kushina, were something of aces in the hole. Tobirama-shishou had explained early on, when the war had started, that in the opening months they would all be more or less village bound. That, until the other villages decided to send out their own jinchuuriki, then there was no point bringing a gun to a knife fight.

 

And when they were sent out, undoubtedly, they would be sent straight to the front lines.

 

As a result, whenever Ren was going to be sent on a mission, especially now that he was a chunin, it was likely going to be without Tobirama-shishou.

 

Instead, most of their time was spent like it was today, within the walls of the village training, practicing other techniques and expanding Ren’s jutsus, or else discussing England. They discussed England quite often.

 

It was more than clear that Ren being English was a big factor in the nidaime taking him as an apprentice, perhaps the largest factor really, though Ren hoped, had he been dead last or an idiot, that Tobirama-shishou wouldn’t have bothered. Ren didn’t really mind, honestly, sometimes it irked him a bit, but it gave him a reason to have the nidaime for a master, and more, for Lee to interact with him whenever she was back in the village. Even with the war and her apprenticeship with Hatake (although this was more unofficial than anything now that both Lee and Minato were jonin), she now had an explicit non-negotiable reason to spend time with Ren as a peer. Not just a little brother, or a cute little academy student who sometimes helped her with translations, but someone who had passed his chunin exams before she or Minato had and was very likely to be joining their ranks as jonin within a few years himself.

 

It also gave Ren no small amount of pleasure that Hatake Kakashi, his old academy rival, had not been nearly so lucky in all of this as Ren himself had been. Being the best in the class, rather than second best to Ren, he’d ended up on the latest iteration of the dreaded team seven. There must be something about that combination that worked, somehow, because it had produced not only the sannin but also Lee and Minato’s team, but Ren highly doubted the little demon Kakashi’s team was a sannin in the making.

 

Especially since the class idiot along with his kunoichi teammate naturally chafed at the idea of a five-year-old upstart, who’d humiliated them along with everyone else all year, really was their superior.

 

As soon as Kakashi had passed the chunin exams, at the tender and unbelievable age of six, he’d been foisted off onto another just graduating genin team where the exact same problem occurred, except worse, because now Hatake was an upstart six-year-old chunin who outranked them. He’d probably be pawned off again, and again, maybe even until he was eleven or ten and academy students actually his age started to trickle out of the academy and onto genin teams.

 

Now, it wasn’t that Ren enjoyed Hatake Kakashi’s suffering but… Well, that was a lie, he found it hysterical.

 

“What are you looking so happy about?”

 

Ren looked up to see Tobirama-shishou walking back into the room with a rather amused look on his face as he stared down at his somewhat flustered apprentice. Ren tried to compose himself, “Oh, nothing really, just that my birthday is coming up soon.”

 

The nidaime didn’t look as if he accepted this, but was willing to let it slide, as he mused, “It’s at the end of December, yes?”

 

Ren almost opened his mouth to reply that it was specifically New Year’s Eve but caught himself just in time, the new year in Konoha wasn’t until a month or so later.

 

“That’s right, I just realized that it’s almost been three years. I mean, three years since I immigrated here,” Ren trailed off, his mind now wandering back to Wool’s Orphange of all things. He wondered if it was still there, probably, all the same, he couldn’t help the idle daydream wishing the place had burnt to the ground as soon as he’d left it.

 

Tobirama-shishou considered this, but was probably thinking of something quite different than Ren.  He probably was thinking again over what Ren had told him, and even what Lee had told him, over the small facts about England and Europe and the world Tom Marvolo Riddle had known so intimately.

 

He’d never thought about it, still didn’t really, but Konoha was very new. The village itself had been built by the shodaime and his brother after all, Tobirama-shishou had basically made its government even though Senju Hashirama had willed it into being when no one had believed that it was even possible. That meant it was really only a few decades old, highlighted by the fact that it was the sandaime hokage who was leading, a man who had once been Tobirama-shishou’s student.

 

As for the world, all written records Tobirama-shishou had ever heard of or seen, only seemed to go back a few centuries, five hundred years or so at maximum. There had been people around before then, but as far as it seemed, some great disaster or war had occurred, something vaguely mentioned here and there, that supposedly the sage of the six paths had talked about or been around for, that had prevented clans from forming or having any stable sort of lifestyle until after the sage had wandered the continent teaching the basis of ninjutsu.

 

And then the clan wars had started, lasting centuries, until Konohagakure itself was built.

 

That England, by comparison, had roots dating back further than two thousand years, before the Romans themselves had invaded, seemed unbelievable to Tobirama-shishou and even his brother. Lee herself had told them all about this ages ago, in fact, Lee had told them even more than Ren had, because somehow even though Lee had left when she was only four, like the nidaime she seemed to know so much about the world she’d left behind, certainly more than Ren himself did.

 

More, it was a world in which chakra itself, despite clearly existing in himself and in Lee, was somehow dismissed entirely. A concept that was almost incomprehensible to Tobirama-shishou, no matter how true it was.

 

He wished… he wished Tobirama-shishou would have more faith in Lee, because she wasn’t ever truly wrong, at least, not from what Ren had ever heard.

 

Still, all the same, even with three years distance between himself and England, even though he didn’t seem to loathe it quite as much as Lee herself did, Ren had no desire to go back, no matter how interested Tobirama-shishou himself was.

 

In the end, he had to agree with Lee, there was simply no reason to return to England.

 

Of course, Ren didn’t know, that only a few weeks later he’d be drafted to join a team of Eru Lee, Namikaze Minato, and Uzumaki Kushina to place experimental and volatile seals at the border to the land of fire, that the universe, through plant zombies and Lee’s unwieldly teleportation, would decide for both him and Lee.

 

Just in time for his eleventh birthday.

 

* * *

 

Debriefing directly to the hokage was, itself, an odd occurrence, particularly for a chunin. Ren, in fact, had never debriefed directly with the hokage after any of his missions. Given that he’d only ever been on C-rank and D-rank missions, this latest having been his first B-rank mission, this was pretty understandable.

 

There had never been much to say about any of them. Certainly nothing that the hokage himself had to here, so usually Ren would turn out a small form detailing what had happened, or else Tobirama-shishou would for him, and that was the end of it.

 

Of course, for Eru Lee and Namikaze Minato, almost every mission they’d had since they were genin had involved a direct and immediate debriefing not only with the hokage but often with the shodaime, the nidaime, and at least one of the sannin.

 

It didn’t matter if it was C-rank or even sometimes a lowly D-rank, there was going to be a debriefing, and it was going to go far past its scheduled slot.

 

Ren’s latest B-rank mission, where he’d been placed onto a team with Namikaze Minato, Eru Lee, and Uzumaki Kushina, apparently, no different, even with a war going on. Of the four of them, facing the hokage, Jiraiya-sama with his face in one hand, the shodaime, and a somewhat exasperated Tobirama-shishou, only Lee and Minato seemed well within their element.

 

After having read through the letter, or rather, bickering over the various translations of the letter, ending up with one translation for each of them in the room that were even half-way fluent in English, they now stood in rather dumb silence waiting for someone, anyone, to give their opinion.

 

Finally, it was Lee who spoke first, “Well, I for one, am just going to reiterate the very clear and undeniable fact that there are no shinobi in _England_.”

 

Lee then looked down at her ribs, at her blood-stained clothing, and asked, “Can I go home now? I’m still bleeding and…”

 

Tobirama-shishou didn’t even give her the chance to finish that sentence.

 

“And I am going to simply reiterate that this letter, and this experience you had with this,” Tobirama-shishou glanced down at the letter, reading the name of the man in the canary suit, or at least, the man Ren assumed had spoken with them, “Dumbledore Albus, clearly points to the fact that there are in fact, shinobi in _England_!”

 

“Shinobi is a strong word,” Lee hedged, to which Ren, wincing, had to agree.

 

“The man said it was an academy for witchcraft and _wizardry_ ,” Ren stated, hating to state it, really, as in any other situation he wouldn’t be agreeing with Lee here but he couldn’t help it when she was, well, right, “It says that in the letter as well, _wizardry_ isn’t… it isn’t close to anything we’d think of as a ninja.”

 

“I don’t care what they call it. Chakra has been called magic before, the _English_ word simply might not translate,” Tobirama-shishou scoffed, “What is clear is that a man, with not insignificant levels of chakra, has approached Ren as a figure of authority for his hidden village with a prepared invitation for an academy with a clear curriculum and text books for several disciplines, which somehow coincided with your arrival in England and Ren’s eleventh birthday. So, tell me again, Lee, why this man is not a shinobi.”

 

“That’s unfair, nidaime-sama,” Lee pointed out, but left it that, apparently knowing when to concede defeat.

 

“Well, with that out of the way,” the hokage said with a sigh, taking out his pipe and filling it with tobacco, “What exactly did you tell our _English_ friend?”

 

“That we had to think on it and check with our superiors,” Minato answered putting the pressure back on the higher-ranking superiors in question.

 

Jiraiya-sama let out a sigh and asked, almost rhetorically, “I just want to know, why I’m still pulled into your messes, when you brats are finally jonin?”

 

“There is no escaping the team-seven curse, sensei,” Minato quipped back, to which Jiraiya-sama seemed to haplessly agree as he didn’t say anything to refute this.

 

Meanwhile, the shodaime was inspecting the letter, reading through the contents again, and then said, “I think we should accept.”

 

“Accept?!” Ren balked, that having been, well, the last thing he’d expected to hear.

 

“You do realize they’re trying to poach our chunin, don’t you, onii-san?” Tobirama-shishou asked but the shodaime brushed this off rather easily.

 

The shodaime gave a rather sheepish grin before he acknowledged, “Well, to be fair, we poached Ren-kun first, or well, Lee-chan kidnapped him…”

 

“Kidnapping is also a strong word,” Lee interjected but no one seemed to care about the technicalities of Ren’s immigration to Konoha.

 

Hashirama continued without missing a beat, “And given the existence of this letter, they don’t seem to have held a grudge. In fact, it sounds like they didn’t even realize he was gone, this seems like a pretty standardized invitation. We don’t know anything about the English village or their jutsus. It might not even be anything like a hidden village at all, if we accept Ren’s invitation in good faith, this can be our chance to build ties.”

 

Only the shodaime seemed to have this much blind faith in the shinobi of England, but then, the shodaime did have a knack for somehow, impossibly, being right about this sort of thing. As if his faith in the world alone was enough to inspire good will among men.

 

“That’s great,” Kushina pointed out, “But Ren is only a chunin, that seems like… I don’t know, the kind of work you’d want for a jonin, or even a kage.”

 

Ren bristled somewhat, but she had a point, in fact, that was why they’d blown off the man then and there to rush back to Konoha, that, and the fact that if Lee wasn’t so Lee she would have been suffering from a near fatal wound.

 

As it was Ren found himself glancing at her again, wondering and worrying at the fact that she was still standing on her feet rather than back at the apartment or in the hospital in bedrest.

 

“Under normal circumstances I’d agree with you, kid,” Jiraiya-sama said with a sigh, “But with the war breaking out, and with a limited number of shinobi being fluent in English, we don’t have too many to spare for this sort of thing. Not to mention that Ren-kun, himself, seems to be expected.”

 

Jiraiya’s eyes then turned to Lee, “Although, if they want Ren-kun, why the hell weren’t they falling over themselves to get Lee?”

 

That was, well, an excellent question. Ren liked to pride himself on his abilities, but he wouldn’t hesitate to say that Lee was, well, monumentally better than he was. The fact that she was also English should have meant they’d be dying to get her back.

 

“Well,” Lee said with a sheepish look on her face, looking as if she was loathing to bring this up, “Remember how I said I picked up Ren from fifty years before I left _England_? That might be coming into play here.”

 

No one seemed to want to acknowledge this, by the looks on their faces, not that Ren blamed them, Lee’s casual time travel was, well, disturbing to contemplate.

 

“But why get this letter now?” Minato asked, “When we just happen to be in England, why not three years earlier before we got our hands on him, and, for that matter, why him when they didn’t seem to acknowledge him or Lee before this point?”

 

Unfortunately, these were all uncomfortable points they’d argued about while translating, and that no one had a real answer to. One answer was that the English system simply started, well, extremely late. That their academy accepted students at around the age that Konohagakure’s academy students were being placed into genin teams. The other answer was, well, Ren had no idea what, perhaps that Konoha taking Ren had made them feel threatened enough to go through this whole song and dance as soon as he’d made a reappearance.

 

But the coincidental timing for that just seemed entirely too much, that would have meant they were watching Wool’s orphanage and that the man in the yellow suit had been staking it out for Ren’s very unlikely arrival in the place.

 

He’d seemed just as shocked as they’d been.

 

“Well, if they’re going to give us an open door like this, so be it,” the hokage stated with a sigh, officially settling the issue, “We’ve clearly put off this _England_ issue long enough, even with a war, putting it off further would not be prudent. Particularly when we have some firepower to spare.”

 

Lee put her head into her hands, looking as if she dearly wanted to verbally protest the issue but held it in, and for his own part Ren grimaced. Because, if there was an English village at all, a village he’d never heard of in eight years of living in England and blatantly making use of his natural talent in genjutsu and ninjutsu, then it must be an absurd place.

 

Because what kind of a village let a blood limit like Eru Lee’s simply walk out on them?

 

As it was, both Ren and Lee were in a similar stupor, apparently, as options for who exactly to send were quickly deliberated. Minato, Kushina, the shodaime, Jiraiya-sama, Orochimaru-sama, and Hatake Sakumo were all briefly considered before, rather quickly, being rejected.

 

In the end they decided on Tobirama-shishou, Lee, Ren, and, to Ren’s overwhelmingly numb horror, Hatake Kakashi. And sometimes, Ren didn’t wonder if Lee had a point, and that the universe was actively crumbling at its foundations.

 

Because in what other world would he have the joy of being sent on a mission with both Tobirama-shishou and Lee, but also the displeasure of being sent out with that tiny freak of nature Hatake Kakashi.

 

* * *

 

When they arrived in London, right outside of Wool’s Orphanage, looking just as bleak and unwelcoming as ever, Ren was already in a foul mood. Of course, Lee’s overpowered teleportation didn’t help matters, even Tobirama-shishou looking somewhat worse for wear after that, but all the same he found himself glaring at the building.

 

It was snowing, thick grey flakes and sludge already built up along the gutter, only a few days into the new year. Everyone who passed by them looked just as grey and bleak as their surroundings, grey caps on their heads, barely even noticing the group of foreigners all huddling in front of the orphanage.

 

Before anyone could suggest otherwise, as soon as he caught his breath, Ren stated, “We’re not staying at the orphanage.”

 

On seeing Tobirama-shishou and Kakashi’s questioning gazes he added, “We can’t, anyways, they only accept children.”

 

Tobirama-shishou seemed to note this but then placed his fingers to the pavement, closing his eyes, and said, “It’s just as well, there seem to be… veins of chakra, running through the street, to some central source further into the city, not more than a few miles from here. That, likely, is where our _English_ hidden village is located.”

 

Without too much bickering they set off on Tobirama-shishou’s trail towards London’s west side, a merry band of oriental foreigners, only evading the eyes of everyone around them thanks to Ren and Lee’s combined genjutsus. And it struck him, as he walked in platformed sandals, and the dark greens and blues of Konoha with a shinobi’s headband tied across his forehead, that like Lee he probably looked anything but English.

 

Either way, somehow, London seemed more depressing than when Ren remembered it last. Perhaps it had grown worse, or perhaps, Ren had grown immune to it back then, growing up in this gray dismal London, somehow more subdued than even Konoha on the brink of war.

 

Breathing out mist Ren glanced at Lee, at her clear shared displeasure with him, and found himself again fighting down a flush as he took in the redness of her cheeks or the way her hair seemed so much brighter against the London winter backdrop.

 

“Do you like how, apparently, _England’s_ hidden village is on the west side, Lee?” Ren asked, knowing that she’d probably find as much amusement in this fact as he did. Shinobi weren’t necessarily poor, by any means, but that said they were usually somewhat separate from their civilian counterparts.

 

It just seemed entirely too odd to think that any hidden village would be right next to Buckingham Palace or even Westminster.

 

Lee offered him a somewhat wry and amused smile, “Well, I’m still of the theory that this place is nothing more than a genjutsu that is trying way too hard. So, in that sense, placing the _English_ hidden village in the heart of _Westminster_ would make perfect sense.”

 

“I don’t know if I’m comfortable with that theory,” Ren stated truthfully, no matter how many times he was tempted to agree, recently that was.

 

“The universe doesn’t care much for the comfort of us mere mortals, Ren,” Lee said with a smile, and even here, her smile was perfect and brilliant. Ren felt himself grinning back, despite the cold slush on the streets and the snow falling from the sky.

 

Glancing next to him, Ren met Hatake Kakashi’s disapproving glare with a smirk. Yes, Ren would rub salt in that wound for as long as he was able.

 

However, before either Kakashi or Ren could say anything about that Tobirama-shishou abruptly stopped, glancing up to stare at the painted sign of a rather dingy looking pub.

 

“This is it,” Tobirama-shishou declared.

 

“…The Leaky Cauldron?” Lee asked, reading the sign and then looking at the nidaime with a pair of raised eyebrows but he hardly seemed to notice.

 

“Many of the veins lead to this point, and the defenses seem… Weaker, here,” Tobirama-shishou declared even as he looked at the place with raised eyebrows.

 

“In a _pub_?” Ren couldn’t help but ask, although even as he said it he couldn’t help but notice the faint genjutsu that had been placed around it, not enough to effectively hide it from anyone other than a civilian, but just enough to tease at Ren’s senses and catch his interest.

 

For all that it was a pub.

 

“It doesn’t matter what it looks like,” Tobirama-shishou snapped, “If a bar is their entrance then a bar is their entrance.”

 

Stepping inside the place and dusting the snow off their clothing it was… Well, a pub, for one thing but also nothing like anything Ren had ever seen while in England. The people were dressed, for lack of a better term, like druids or else witches or wizards. They wore great flowing robes of all sorts of different colors and fabrics, as well as oversized pointed hats on their heads. Some sang hearty drinking tunes, many of which Tom had never heard from the normal part of London, and all seemed to possess the small wooden wands that the letter had talked about.

 

“Holy shit,” Lee declared, as they stood in the doorway, and Ren couldn’t help but agree.

 

“These are… shinobi?” Kakashi finally asked, but Ren had no response, they were certainly drunk, but more than that… Well, none of them had the same amount of chakra that the man they had previously met did, but they weren’t lacking chakra either. And even while drunk some were performing bizarre and overpowered jutsus for tasks like cleaning beer glasses.

 

But none of them had a shinobi’s edge, an edge that was never lost even with alcohol, instead they were… Well, like a bunch of drunk civilians if civilians were capable of any sort of jutsu.

 

“It’s actually a bar,” Tobirama-shishou said to himself in amazement, probably having thought that the bar was a front, and surely some sort of border control rested beneath it.

 

Wordlessly, glancing at each other, they ended up sitting in one of the booths in the corner, watching their English shinobi counterparts even as Tobirama-shishou ordered a round of something called butterbeer, even as he desperately looked like he wanted to order something alcoholic.

 

“So, it’s a _pub_ ,” Lee said after having taken a swig of her frothing drink, “I guess it’s clear, that if their border is a _pub_ , then the _English_ shinobi know how to party.”

 

Tobirama-shishou only sighed, still seeming to be in some sort of shock, “Well, at any rate, I believe the… hole in their defenses…”

 

“You mean the entrance to the _English_ hidden village,” Lee corrected without any hint of shame.

 

“Is somewhere behind this building or else inside it,” Tobirama-shishou finished, unspoken was that as soon as he recovered, they’d have to go and look for it.

 

As it was, even though Lee and Ren had dropped the genjutsu, they weren’t attracting nearly as much attention as a foreign shinobi should. There were a few glances here and there, but most of the patrons seemed to shrug it off, instead consumed with their own conversations, meals, and drinks.

 

“Right, but then how do we find this Dumbledore Albus again?” Lee asked, crossing her arms, “We didn’t exactly get details of where we could meet up again.”

 

Tobirama-shishou, with a hesitance that was rather unlike him, pulled out the letter, blinking, and stated, “It says they expect a response by owl no later than the end of August.”

 

“By owl?” Kakashi asked, slowly, silver eyebrows raised towards his hairline.

 

Tobirama-shishou set the letter back down and took another long drink. Finally, he said, “Are you sure, Lee, that this man was an official of his government?”

 

“Well, that, or a genjutsu,” Lee stated, “But if you prefer to believe reality isn’t falling apart, then yes, he seemed to be the real deal. For whatever that’s worth among these people.”

 

 Tobirama-shishou had nothing to say to this, apparently, as he took another drink.

 

Ren wondered if it was a good time to point out that the man had had an uncanny fondness for the color yellow.

 

For a moment they all sat in thoughtful silence, each thinking over the absurdity of this situation, all of it really. Finally, Lee seemed to have had enough of it, she set down her drink, stood from the table and approached the bartender.

 

“ _Excuse me, sir, you wouldn’t happen to know how to get into contact with Albus Dumbledore, would you?_ ” Lee asked in English, showing him a copy of the letter as she gave him her attempt at a disarming smile, “ _My little brother was sent this letter a few days ago, but we’ve been out of the country and are just generally unfamiliar with this whole process, and don’t really know what to do._ ”

 

“The hell is she doing,” Tobirama-shishou muttered to himself as the bartender looked over towards them, eyes landing on Ren as Lee pointed towards him.

 

The bartender, however, appeared to have some familiarity with this as his eyes lit up with recognition, as if this explained everything odd and foreign about them, and he asked, “ _Oh, muggleborn then?_ ”

 

Lee looked at him for a few moments, then said, “ _Sure._ ”

 

This seemed to be all the man needed to know as he then went onto jovially explain, “ _Could have sworn the deputy headmaster met with all the muggleborn students, but maybe yours got turned around if you were out of the country. Right, here, just get your little brother to sign the letter here, then I have an owl and can show you how to send it off to Hogwarts. If you want you and your family can stay here the night, I have a few rooms left open, and I’m sure Dumbledore can swing by and meet you tomorrow since it’s a Saturday._ ”

 

Lee nodded slowly, her grin plastered to her face, “ _Yes, thank you sir, that would be unbelievably helpful._ ”

 

The man laughed, “ _Not a problem, is he excited then, your little brother?_ ”

 

Lee laughed in return, a forced thing, and said, “ _Oh, little Tommy has never been more ecstatic._ ”

Ren’s heart, he thought, for a moment, stopped beating entirely.

 

Next to Ren, Kakashi snickered into his drink, ignoring Ren’s spike of killing intent, and dodging as Ren attempted to use his chakra to slosh the drink into his far too smug six-year-old face.

 

Little Tommy, as Lee coined him, had never been nearly so close to killing someone before.

 

* * *

 

True to the bartender’s word, Dumbledore Albus arrived early the next morning, this time in a set of loose overflowing robes that featured varying shades of pink all the way from rose to burgundy, topped with a ridiculous looking hat.

 

Somehow, even compared to his counterparts, Dumbledore Albus took the English shinobi fashion sense just that much further. However, contrasting this, his expression as it landed on the four of them was quite wary even as he walked over towards them.

 

“Ah, Tom, good to see you again, I was worried when your friend apparated,” Dumbledore said in English, motioning to Lee who offered him a slight wave of acknowledgement. The man tried to smile in return, but it fell short of his eyes.

 

Ren wasn’t quite sure what it was Dumbledore thought he was seeing, when he looked at them, at the headbands and their clothing, but whatever it was he clearly didn’t like it. However, for whatever reason, he was also holding his tongue.

 

“I don’t believe I introduced myself last time, my name is Albus Dumbledore, and I am, as you know, the depuity headmaster of Hogwarts school of witchcraft and wizardry. And I am glad that you have accepted your invitation,” he tacked on last minute, no doubt referring to Ren’s signature which had been sent off, by owl, towards some castle in Scotland that apparently really was called Hogwarts.

 

Hogwarts, as in warts on a hog, someone had thought that was a brilliant name for a castle.

 

“Tobirama Senju,” Tobirama-shishou said, reaching forward to take Dumbledore’s hand, a custom Ren had explained a while ago, “Tom Riddle, my apprentice, you’ve already met, the girl is Lee Eru comrade of mine and the boy Kakashi Hatake, a… classmate of Tom’s.”

 

Tom… Was Ren to be Tom Marvolo Riddle, here then? He supposed it made sense, the letter had been addressed to Tom, but all the same, all the same he had intended to leave that name behind for none to remember it.

 

Dumbledore shook Tobirama-shishou’s hand with raised eyebrows, glancing to look at Lee then Kakashi, likely pondering over the word classmate. It wasn’t untrue, but there was no good word for a comrade or chunin or shinobi that would translate over into English. At least, none that Ren could think of.

 

“We’re from another country, _Konohagakure_ , which I understand to be very far from this one,” Tobirama-shishou explained, “We were honestly quite surprised to get a letter, as we were not aware that _England_ had an academy for… magic.”

 

“ _Konohagakure_?” Dumbledore asked with a frown, “I do not believe I’ve heard of such a land.”

 

His eyes then landed on Ren and then he seemed to remember himself.

 

“Ah, yes, you see, Tom is an orphan, a muggleborn orphan,” Dumbledore stopped, looked at them, seeing their lack of comprehension, “A muggleborn is someone whose parents do not have magic, or, rather, their parents are muggles.”

 

That… That didn’t make any sense. Everyone had at least some amount of chakra, true, civilians didn’t have enough to be of any real use, not enough to use in any kind of a jutsu. Perhaps that was what he meant, if your parents were civilians, and muggle was a rough translation for civilian but…

 

Ren’s eyes slid to their fellow patrons, these men, despite their amount of chakra, could hardly be labeled as shinobi.

 

“Ah, we call such people civilians, I believe,” Tobirama-shishou explained, apparently coming to the same conclusion as Ren.

 

Dumbledore gave a polite, if strained, smile to this. For a moment they sat in a rather awkward silence, neither quite knowing what to say to one another. Finally, Dumbledore said, “There are a few rules, before you attend Hogwarts, which I should explain. First, even though you can get your wand now, I recommend Ollivanders’, you may not use spells outside of school until you are seventeen.”

 

That made… very little sense, a world without jutsus was, well, incomprehensible. Besides, why?

 

“You see, you also cannot use magic in front of muggles,” Dumbledore added when he was met with, once again, rather blank expressions.

 

Lee glanced over at the other patrons, then back to Dumbledore, “They’re using magic.”

 

Dumbledore looked over, “Oh, well, they’re wizards.”

 

Lee blinked, looked over again, and then back with a bewildered expression, “They’re drinking at noon.”

 

“… Being a wizard or witch does not preclude one from poor life choices, Miss Eru,” Dumbledore said, but he was missing the point, the point being that even the most alcoholic and suicidal of shinobi would not be this unguarded in a public venue on the edge of his village.

 

Lee glanced over at them again, glanced back, then asked, “Can you give a short summary, on how, exactly, one goes about identifying one of these… muggles of yours. I think I’m a little confused on the concept.”  


Dumbledore was looking at Lee as if she had brain damage, “A muggle, Miss Eru, cannot use magic. Surely, in your own country, the statute of secrecy is in place.”

 

Ren had no idea what that was, so he doubted very much that it was in place. The very idea was a strange one, a hidden village needed civilians to survive, they were a village’s main source of income. If one never revealed jutsus to civilians, then how would Konoha or any other village support itself?

 

Lee, for her own part, looked rather blank and gave a rather lame, “Sure.”

 

This, apparently, did nothing to reassure the man.

 

There was another moment of strained silence. Finally, Dumbledore cleared his throat, and noted, “Well, I see you have found The Leaky Cauldron, at least. Do you need help getting your Hogwarts supplies before the start of term?”

 

The day before they had taken the bartender’s advice regarding money, and through Lee’s illegal use of ninjutsu and making thousands of counterfeit pounds for Tobirama-shishou, for him to claim as a small portion of the Senju estate and his own personal finances as brother of the clan head, they had opened a bank account with… goblins, and had begun pilfering all the marketplace for every book that had ever been in print no matter the subject as well as rather high end supplies for various English specialties.

 

Ren was sure, that by this point, they had every book that was on his list for the introductory academy courses and then some.

 

At this point, all Ren lacked, was the mysterious wand that all English shinobi appeared to use for everything but taijutsu as well as the black kimono that they insisted upon.

 

“I think we have most everything we need,” Tobirama-shishou answered, “However, before you leave, exactly how long is the Hogwarts term, and how long until a student graduates?”

 

“Ah, yes, Hogwarts lasts until late May of every year, from age eleven to seventeen, and there is a break for the winter holidays,” Dumbledore cheerfully explained, clearly more at ease with this topic.

 

“Seven years?!” Ren asked, almost choking on his own spit, good god, he couldn’t afford seven years of this. None of them could, that was a deep long-term mission, the kind that ANBU took, and not even ANBU, but a deeply infiltrating spy.

 

“Is there a problem with that?” Dumbledore asked, raised eyebrows, clearly realizing from Ren’s expression that there was but Ren didn’t answer him.

 

Instead he forced himself to calm down, clearly he’d just try to graduate early, or else drop out. It wasn’t as if he was really English, after all, and he’d always hold closer ties to Konoha. It would be fine, he wouldn’t be stuck in England forever, there was no need to panic.

 

At the very least, they could reconvene during the winter holidays and decide what to do from there. Who knows, by then they might even be called back to Konoha, if they were needed on the front.

 

“There’s no real issue on our end,” Tobirama-shishou said with a polite smile before adding, “That said, Lee Eru is also from England, originally, and we were hoping that she and Kakashi Hatake might attend your academy as well as Tom.”

 

Dumbledore’s eyes widened as he took in the other two, carefully, he said, “I am afraid that Miss Eru is too old, a student attends Hogwarts after their eleventh birthday but before their twelfth she would be… dreadfully behind in the curriculum. On the other hand, Mr. Hatake appears to be much too young for Hogwarts. That, and, Hogwarts is by invitation only, and I presume that neither she nor Mr. Hatake have a letter.”

 

They… They didn’t want Lee? Ren sat there, completely dumbfounded, that someone could look Lee, Eru Lee, in the face and honestly say that they didn’t want her. Tobirama-shishou was apparently dumbfounded as well as he said nothing.

 

For a moment Ren’s eyes met Tobirama-shishous, and in them was the clear decision to let this one lie and not push it, if they didn’t realize what they lost then so much the better for Konoha.

 

Eventually, in the somewhat strained silence, Lee produced a letter out of thin air, “I’m afraid, actually, that Kakashi does have a letter, it arrived on his… eleventh birthday.”

 

Dumbledore looked dubiously at Kakashi, “His eleventh birthday?”

 

Kakashi was hardly short for his age, but he was not nearly tall enough to go masquerading as an eleven-year-old either, and even his unnatural poise and intelligence couldn’t disguise his height or childish features.

 

“I am short and adorable for my age, sir,” Kakashi supplied with a blindingly cheerful grin that did nothing to convince Dumbledore.

 

“Kakashi Hatake is eleven,” Lee insisted, leaning forward, eyes burning and the force of her genjutsu almost seeming to warp their surroundings, “He has received a letter, he is the droid you are looking for, and he will be accepted into your academy.”  


“He is eleven…” Dumbledore repeated dumbly, his eyes glazing over for a moment, and for a moment he almost seemed to resist, but then, blinking, he said, “Well then, if he has a letter, and he is eleven, I can hardly deny him admittance.”

 

“Good, glad that both of my adorable little brothers will have the honor and glory of enrolling in Hogwarts,” Lee said, leaning back away from Dumbledore, with a pleased smile on her face, ignoring Ren’s pout at once again being referred to as a little brother along with Hatake.

 

However, now was hardly the time to be upset by that, or at least, not show how upset he was by that in public. Though apparently, judging by Hatake’s raised eyebrow in his direction, he wasn’t doing a very good job concealing it.

 

Dumbledore left all too swiftly after that, lamely stating he looked forward to seeing Ren and Hatake in the fall, apparently being rather uncomfortable around the lot of them, one would think he’d never seen a shinobi before. Which left them to step into Ollvianders’ and go through the bizarre process of being chosen by a stick of wood.

 

Ren went first, it taking nearly an hour to find his wand, but when it was placed in his hand, the core having been made from the feather of a phoenix, the man Ollivander whispered to him, “I do believe, Mr. Riddle, that we can expect great things from you.”

 

However, this was ruined only a few minutes later when Hatake was handed his own wand, a great spark of light appearing at the tip, and Ollivander exclaiming, “And we shall expect great things from you as well.”

 

Because of course, he must somehow still be judged on equal footing, with the six-year-old Hatake Kakashi.

 

(And, he didn’t know if it was worse or better, after Tobirama-shishou had selected a wand and then Lee was placed for one, that she received the holly brother wand to Ren’s, and then promptly blew up the entire store by accidentally channeling too much chakra into the stick.)

 

* * *

 

Fall arrived somehow too quickly and too slowly, so that Ren felt as if he had only just blinked and already he and Hatake are standing on the platform, looking like a pair of fools in their English black robes, their foreheads stripped of headbands, all while still wearing the more eastern Konoha garb beneath all of that.

 

Ren couldn’t help but notice how awfully they were standing out, even here on the platform filled with parents tearfully wishing their children farewell as they board the train headed to Scotland.

 

And, like a pair of dutiful parents, woefully mismatched in age, Tobirama-shishou and Lee stand side by side to see the pair of them off. Tobirama-shishou had his head in another book, an advanced one on Transfiguration, which in itself was a rather familiar occurrence as Tobirama-shishou spent the last half-year studying, experimenting, and studying some more all while shipping back supplies, theories, and research to Konoha.

 

Ren was sure, that if his body hadn’t forced him to, Tobirama-shishou wouldn’t have wasted any time sleeping or eating in the last six months.

 

Lee, for her own part, was grinning at the pair of them, relinquishing her role as temporary tour guide as she’d teleported the four of them all over Great Britain as well as the continent, allowing them to see it while they could, before another great muggle war broke out with Germany.

 

He was going to miss her terribly.

 

Now, of course, the real work would begin, all of it somehow relying on Ren and Hatake. It wasn’t so much infiltration, or becoming sleeper agents for that matter, but sort of a first look into this world of English shinobi, a chance to form ties amongst their peers and get an idea of how this place worked. Diplomats would come later, probably in the form of someone much older and more experienced, for now all they had to do was show up, play nice, and send frequent reports back to the nidaime and Lee who would in turn send those back to Konoha.

 

Later, after the semester was over, then the year, they’d decide what to do from there.

 

Still, this would be the first time in three years he’d lived anywhere other than her and Minato’s small apartment, the first real time he’d left Konoha for any extended period of time. And even though he was stuck with Hatake Kakashi, of all the people in the world, a part of him was pathetically glad that at least someone familiar was here with him on this platform.

 

At least, somehow, he wasn’t going into this entirely alone.

 

“I can’t believe they’re having you ride a train to this place,” Lee commented, “I wish I could go with you, almost, babysitting the nidaime isn’t going to be much fun.”

 

The fact that Tobirama-shishou was too absorbed in his book said more than enough about the fact that he probably did need babysitting, even if his babysitter was Lee.

 

“I wish you could come too, nee-san,” Kakashi said.

 

“Just don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” Lee said fondly, before pausing, and adding, “Actually, don’t do anything Minato wouldn’t do, I might not be the best of examples.”

 

“Because you’d burn down the castle?” Ren couldn’t help but ask with a small smile, fairly certain that during one of Lee’s earlier missions she’d burnt down an inn that she and the rest of team seven had been lodging in.

 

It just seemed like one of those things that would happen to Lee.

 

“Well, if it gets raided by plant zombies, then feel free to burn down the castle,” Lee said then glancing at the train, “Either way, you two better get on up there and start making dweeby _English_ friends.”

 

Hatake rushed forward and pulled Lee into a hug, Ren stood there awkwardly, envious but also rather embarrassed second hand, he was too old for something like that, but he wanted nothing more than to rush in and hug her too without caring if anyone was watching…

 

He couldn’t remember if he’d ever hugged Lee before.

 

Tobirama-shishou closed his book with a sense of finality, smiled at them both, and said, “Best of luck, write often, and try not to have too much fun.”

 

With that, and the blowing of the whistle on the train, Hatake and Ren stepped on board, pulling their English trunks with them and then stared down the long hallway of compartments, the smile slipping from both of their faces. Eventually, they came to an empty one, walking in and setting their luggage up onto the racks, watching as the train pulled away from the station, leaving Lee and Tobirama-shishou behind.

 

Then they sat in the stifling silence, each turned toward the window as London, England, then the hills of Scotland begin to roll past them.

 

“I have never been good at making friends,” Hatake murmured towards his own reflection in the window, a wry smile on his face, “Especially with people my own age.”

 

It’s a sentiment, that against his own will, Ren can empathize with. He too, has always had issues making friends his own age, granted he’s never really wanted to make friends. However, Lee and Minato have always been closest to him, and they were four years older. And even then, if neither Lee nor Minato had taken any interest in him, he doubted his own pride would have allowed them close to him.

 

He'd been all too ready to brush Lee off in the beginning and sometimes he still wondered if he wasn’t paying for his actions then in how easily Lee dismissed him as her little brother.

 

“This is going to be difficult,” Ren said, instead, eliciting a small hum of agreement from Hatake.

 

Because he doubted he’d find these Englishmen anything but dull, not from what he’d seen of them in Diagon Alley, in The Leaky Cauldron, or in anywhere else. Ren had never been a fan of civilians, inside the orphanage or outside of it.

 

And he still highly doubted that these people were shinobi, not in the sense that Konoha meant it. Ren had once been to a civilian academy, while he was in the orphanage, and it had never once been interesting.

 

He sighed, leaning his forehead against the glass and briefly closing his eyes, picturing Lee as she’d been, dressed in English clothing, smiling at him from the station as she stood next to Tobirama-shishou. Already he was painting that image in nostalgia…

 

The door opened, a rather plain looking girl with brown hair, freckles, and oversized glasses stepped into the compartment wearing English clothing that Ren was actually familiar with, a pleated skirt and beige overcoat. On seeing the pair of them, she flushed, then opened her mouth to reveal the most obnoxious, ear-splitting, voice Ren had ever heard, “Hello, my name’s Myrtle, all the other compartments are full, thanks for letting me sit with you.”

 

She then sat down, dragging in her suitcase while both Ren and Hatake stared at her with wide horrified eyes. As soon as she was situated, she started again, “I’m a first year, a muggleborn, I hope I’m sorted into Ravenclaw, I read about it in ‘Hogwarts: A History’, what about you two?”

 

Her voice, it was… It was the single most wretched thing Ren had ever heard, that voice could be weaponized and set loose among enemy-nin, forcing anyone nearby to at least wince at the sound of its dull whine.

 

“We’re both… first years too,” Hatake lamely replied, and the girl gave a crow of delight at this, and Hatake, whose hearing apparently was more sensitive than even Ren’s, visibly shuddered at the noise.

 

“That’s great! I was hoping to meet other first years!”

 

Apparently, unintentionally, Hatake had just encouraged the girl. Ren turned his baleful gaze to Hatake who looked back with an expression that asked Ren to not blame him for this because surely this wasn’t his fault.

 

“I’m Re… Tom Riddle, and this is Kakashi Hatake,” Ren explained with a grimace, hoping his clear lack of enthusiasm would clue the girl in, but she was apparently denser than Billy Stubbs.

 

“Oh, you’re both so adorable,” that, or, apparently both Hatake and Ren were eye candy, both of them shuddering slightly at having to confront this fact, “What house do you think you’ll be in?”

 

“Not Ravenclaw,” Hatake quickly responded, remembering the screeching harpy’s initial answer.

 

“Why not?” the girl whined, and it was amazing that that sound alone was cracking the glass of the window.

 

“Well, what Hatake means to say, I believe, is that we both aren’t from England originally and don’t really know the… houses that well,” Ren said with a small, strained, smile which in turn earned him a glare from Hatake for encouraging the banshee.

 

“Well, Ravenclaw is for people who want to pursue knowledge, Gryffindor is for the brave, Hufflepuff for the loyal, and Slytherin for the ambitious and cunning,” Myrtle moaned out before adding, “I’m going to Ravenclaw because I’m smart.”

 

Neither Hatake nor Ren seemed to have anything to say to that or to Myrtle’s declaration of her own superior intellect.

 

Ravenclaw, Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, and Slythering… Good god, what drunk deity had come up with that combination? Actually, what drunk deity had come up with this whole sorting scheme in general, the entire thing was baffling if not incredibly idiotic.

 

“I’m not sure I understand the concept,” Ren finally said, “A student is sent to one of these four houses? But, doesn’t a person need each of these qualities to survive in the world. Without honor, bravery, ambition, intellect, or loyalty, then in some sense or another, that person’s barely human at all.”

 

Certainly in Konoha, a man who only claimed one of those things, would find his way to an early grave or else a life entirely without meaning.

 

This apparently, offended the girl quite greatly and she let out an ear-piercing wail, “That’s not very nice to say! The sorting hat has been used since almost the founding of Hogwarts!”

She then gave a great harrumph and claimed, “Well, I still am going into Ravenclaw no matter what you two think!”

 

“Then I believe,” Ren said with a small, polite, too polite, smile, “That I shall be joining Hatake in not Ravenclaw.”

 

Finally, she seemed to catch on that both of them had at some point insulted her and she wailed, “Are you two bullying me?!”

 

He and Hatake looked at each other and looked back to her while she began to sob, tears catching against the thick panes of her glasses, looking as if she was going to sit there bawling the entire ride to Hogwarts.

 

It was a sad day, when he and Hatake Kakashi, appeared to be on the same wavelength.

 

Without a word Hatake stood, and physically threw the girl out of the compartment along with her trunk, then locked  the door behind him with far more force than perhaps was necessary.

 

“Hey!” she shouted, rattled the handle to the door, “You two can’t lock yourselves in there! That’s not fair!”

 

Hatake slowly, with a blank look on his face, sat back down in his seat in silence, waiting for her to leave.

 

“Hey! That’s mean! You two are being real jerks, you know that?! I don’t care if you two are cute, I’ll tell a prefect!”

 

Neither Ren nor Hatake moved or made any noise at all, neither moved by this patently civilian threat of tattling to the sempai.

 

There was another great wail from outside the door, a few more desperate rattles, and then the wailing slowly, but surely, faded as she dragged her luggage behind her, in search of a new compartment of hapless victims.

 

Ren let out a sigh of relief, slumping against his seat, and in a dazed voice he proclaimed, “I’m not sure I can make it until December.”

 

And even though he was still silent and blank faced, Ren was more than sure that Hatake agreed.

 

* * *

 

The sorting, apparently, was done by a chakra infused talking hat, a hat, that in fact, had introduced itself by singing to its captive audience. Ren, at the sight of it, felt almost all brain activity stop. He was about to have a personality quiz performed by a talking hat, that everyone appeared to take with the upmost seriousness, and he was having a very difficult time not simply buying into Lee’s genjutsu theory and being done with all of it.

 

Especially as, Hatake had now been sitting under the hat for at least a minute, and was still going. The longer he sat, the more muttering began to occur around them, people whispering from the audience and looking at Hatake in wariness or at the very least anticipation.

 

“…Sign of a dark wizard, you know, or at least a powerful one,” Ren heard from somewhere amidst the four great tables in their audience.

 

“… Can’t remember the last person who took this long,” another voice sounded, from somewhere else in the room, likely at the red and gold table that apparently belonged to the Gryffindors.

 

“… Heard he’s a pureblood from Japan, that he’s the next head of his family,” one of the children, a blonde whose hair was almost as light as Hatake, said to one of his peers, “Of course, you can never tell with foreigners, my father says they don’t keep nearly as close track of their pedigree as we do.”

 

“Merlin, he’s so small for an eleven-year-old,” a girl close by to Ren whispered to her friend, giggling while she said it, “He’s so cute looking, oh, I hope he’s in my house.”

 

However, none of them realized that these were all things that, in one way or another, Hatake Kakashi had heard a thousand times before. In Konoha he had always been small, younger than his peers, he had always been adorable to those classmates that hadn’t outright sneered at him and his accomplishments, and he had always been appraised for being the son of his father and the next head of the Hatake clan.

 

However, usually, it was not so blatant in Konoha, there had at least been some respect for a comrade there, and a respect for your abilities and intelligence no matter your age, background, gender, or even personality.

 

Even Ren, who loathed Hatake perhaps more than he had ever loathed another human being, respected Hatake’s abilities and intelligence and wouldn’t have whispered and giggled at him well within earshot.

 

Finally, the hat gave a great shout, “HUFFLEPUFF!”

 

Hatake stood, met his stunned audience with a rather blank expression. For a moment there was perfect silence, only gaping as he apparently defied expectation. Apparently, of the four houses the boy was supposed to get into, Hufflepuff wasn’t it. The children, the blonde, began to snicker, as if Hatake had just proved himself the butt of someone’s joke.

 

“ _Oh, for god’s sake,_ ” Ren whispered to himself in Konoha’s mother tongue, then, ignoring his own sense of pride, he began loudly clapping as everyone had done for every student before Hatake, soon enough joined in by the Hufflepuff table who all began to clap and cheer as Hatake practically stumbled towards them, getting slapped on the back by a grinning older student as he took his seat.

 

The blonde and his dark-haired friends, likely the children of English clans, all sneered at Ren and his display of comradery. Oh, Hatake owed him big for this.

 

After that Ren stopped paying any real attention, allowing the face of these English academy students to blur into one another. There seemed to be a more or less even division, as far as numbers went, so that an even amount went to each of the four houses. Which, if anything, showed the hat for the fraud it was, the fact that the division of brave, ambitious, intellectual, and loyal would be so even as that seemed dubious at best.

 

However, one pattern he noticed, was most of those children with nicer clothing, or else those that shared family features, and the children he’d marked as likely belonging to clans (and wealthy clans at that) seemed to end up in Slytherin more often than not.

 

And if Hatake had ended up in Hufflepuff, and they were here to network and form connections in England, then Ren had better follow the money and the lineage.

 

For in the clans was the heart of any hidden village.

 

Soon enough Dumbledore Albus announced, “Riddle, Tom”

 

Ren stood, noting the grave way Dumbledore seemed to look at him, the only one who seemed to give a foreign shinobi the true wariness he deserved. Ren offered the man a thin and rather polite smile as he sat down upon the stool and lowered the hat onto his head.

 

“Oh,” the hat announced in English, despite somehow resounding within his head, “You are a tricky one, aren’t you?”

 

Ren could almost sigh.

 

“Now, now, don’t be impatient, one can’t rush art,” the hat said, “Let’s see, what we have here, bravery and loyalty have certainly been drilled into you, haven’t they? Or perhaps, you always had the capacity for valor and loyalty, but simply lacked the opportunity. After all, even now, your precious people, as you call them, are few and far between, aren’t they? Still, I think you would do far more for them than most Gryffindors or Hufflepuffs would if push came to shove.”

 

The hat dithered, talking to itself inside of Ren’s head, a dearly uncomfortable experience that made him want to rip it off his head as soon as possible, “You’re intelligent, true, but I don’t think you pursue knowledge for its own sake, that, and I see that a certain young lady has poisoned your thoughts towards the noble house of Ravenclaw.”

 

Ren could just imagine Moaning Myrtle sitting at the Ravenclaw table batting her eyelashes at him, or else wailing at how mean he and Hatake were.

 

“Oh, but ambition, at your heart you are ambitious above all other things, aren’t you, Ren of _Konohagakure_? Always you have been ambitious, and cunning is the rock with which you sharpen this ambition of yours and force it into reality.”

 

Well, that seemed simple enough then, however, the hat almost seemed to hesitate, “However, your sense of honor, your loyalty and bravery, is now intertwined with your ambition in a way that it wouldn’t have been three years before now. You pride yourself on not only your own prowess, but your connection to your comrades, to those that you might even call your family. And your dream isn’t necessarily to be _hokage_ , is it? No, you dream of her, of the future you want with her inside of it.”

 

Lee flashed in his mind, sitting on his bed, her blood on his floor, his sheets, and his shirt, looking at him with those green eyes that burned so very brightly. Sometimes, he wondered, if every time he closed his eyes he saw Lee’s eyes staring back at him.

 

“To be frank, Ren, I’m not entirely sure what to do with you,” the hat mused, which, well, wasn’t that just wonderful.

 

Ren was sure that the students were now whispering at him as he sat here like a shmuck.

 

Finally, the hat asked, “Where would you like to go, Ren?”

 

“Slytherin,” Ren responded swiftly and with more than a little impatience, if the talking hat had simply asked that in the beginning they wouldn’t have had to go through this nonsense.

 

“Ah, but you want to enter Slytherin only for your shallow ambitions Ren,” the hat exclaimed, “For the wealth, knowledge, and pedigree of those you see sorted there, for what it can do for _Konoha_ , not for your own personal growth. I can promise you, Ren, it will not live up to your expectations.”

 

“ _Has anything lived up to my expectations?_ ” Ren asked, slipping into Konoha’s tongue, which somehow seemed easier than English in this moment.

 

“Lee Eru has,” the hat responded swiftly with a confidence that it did not deserve.

 

“You could be great, in Slytherin,” the hat mused, “Yes, three years ago I would have suggested it to you without hesitation. But you are not the same boy you were then, are you? With your current mindset, with your lack of patience and expectation in your peers, I fear it has little to offer you.”

 

But the hat didn’t have any better ideas and they both knew it.

 

The hat sighed, “Very well then, I hope, that you don’t come to regret this, Ren. It’d better be SLYTHERIN!”

 

Ren stood, and was met, as Hatake had been before him, with shocked and dull eyed looks. As he stood there, eyes sweeping the audience, he caught the sour face of his future Slytherin comrades, apparently quite displeased by his sorting.

 

A single soul stood, clapping, Ren turned and saw Hatake, offering him a small salute. Well, it seemed Hatake Kakashi had paid him back in kind after all. Slowly, as if their teeth were being pulled, the Slytherins joined him until Ren was sitting down at their table, next to the previously sorted children.

 

“Don’t think you can sit here, mudblood,” the blonde from earlier sneered even as the next child was being sorted.

 

Ren stared, blinked, “I’m sorry?”

 

“Merlin, you are a mudblood aren’t you? Not that it wasn’t obvious with a surname like Riddle,” another, darker hair boy sneered, “A mudblood in Slytherin, it’s a damn travesty is what it is.”

 

There was snickering about the table, at seeing the blank look on Ren’s face the blonde explained with a sneering sort of pity, as if Ren was stupid, “Mudblood, it means your parents were dirty muggles.

 

“Ah,” Ren said slowly, letting the words sink in, “I see.”

 

This, apparently, was the wrong thing to say as more snickering ensued. And there was, a strange surreal sense to this scene, that these children were dismissing him entirely, not one of them apparently realizing that out of all of them Ren had far more chakra, and was moving like a warrior trained where they all moved like civilian children.

 

None seemed to be able to tell, even by glancing at him and the way he held himself and watched his surroundings, that Ren was a chunin of a foreign village and could slaughter all of them in a heartbeat were he so inclined.

 

That first night, in the over decorated Slytherin bedchamber, shared between four of his absurdly wealthy classmates, Ren penned out his letter to Tobirama-shishou without any true enthusiasm.

 

And once again, he found himself wishing that Lee could be here too.

 

* * *

 

Classes started and within the first week both Ren and Hatake were top of their class and adored by their professors in equal measure barring Dumbledore Albus, who seemed impossible to please, despite both Hatake and Ren’s apparently remarkable progress in Transfiguration jutsus.

 

In a way, it was just like old times, Hatake and Ren competing for first place, only somehow Ren no longer chafing quite as much at Hatake’s age, perhaps because no one appeared to realize that the midgit eleven-year-old was really six.

 

Although how this wasn’t obvious was beyond Ren, perhaps the idea of a six-year-old being as intelligent as Hatake clearly was simply was too alarming to contemplate. Better that he was an absurdly short adolescent than that he was that brilliant.

 

Magic itself, English jutsus, were fascinating. In terms of combat and warfare they were woefully behind the jutsus of Konoha, but their fuinjutsu, their strange brand of ninjutsu, kinjutus, medical jutsus, and branches that belonged wholly to themselves like Potions, Transfiguration, and Alchemy seemed infinite in their potential.

 

England had almost two thousand years of research and development into the creation of their jutsus, in a stable environment relatively without war or loss of knowledge and clan techniques through the ages, and it showed.

 

The castle itself, the walls inscribed with thousands upon thousands of intricately bound seals to create a barrier and almost grant sentience, were a masterpiece, rivalling and perhaps surpassing the great fabled walls of Uzushio before it had fallen in the second war.

 

However, Ren had discovered rather quickly that, barring Hatake, his classmates were all idiots. More, they were so painfully civilian, every day they’d take the moving staircase while both Ren and Hatake had quickly learned to bound from one staircase to another or simply scale the walls rather than wait on the unpredictable staircases’ schedules.

 

Taijutsu was declared something ‘muggle’ and vulgar and far beneath any decent English shinobi and the closet thing they seemed to come to any physical exertion was some demented version of rugby they played on flying broomsticks.

 

They also, didn’t like being shown up by an upstart mudblood.

 

“Hey, mudblood, who do you think you are?” the blonde, Malfoy, had asked a few classes in, “Sucking up like that to Slughorn? You think it’ll make you less dirty, if you try so hard?”

 

In short order they’d attempted to steal his belongings, they’d try to trip him in hallways with jutsus and make him drop his books, and every single time he found it that much harder not to imitate Eru Lee and simply beat them into their place with extreme prejudice.

 

Perhaps it was natural then, that he’d wake up early each day to find some respite from this, and that in short order Hatake would be forced into the same. Within the week, they’d gone from training side by side in silence, to sparring, training together, and commiserating over their woeful lack of success thus far.

 

“My peers, Hatake, are hopelessly ignorant asses,” Ren declared, “One of these days I will punch one of them into a shallow grave.”

 

“Maa maa, Ren-kun, such violence is frowned upon in this establishment,” Hatake said, “Still, you are the English orphan son of civilians, at least you aren’t simply adorable when you aren’t a foreign uppity pureblood.”

 

Ren barked out a rather amused laugh, “We planned this poorly, you would have fared better in Slytherin, we have an entire assortment of English clan heirs.”

 

And there did seem to be dissatisfaction, at least, from Ren had seen of Hatake in their shared classes. There was whispering about his foreign features, his strange silver hair that didn’t seem Japanese at all, about the fact that he was clan heir and seemed to be such a snob because of it, likely having had everything handed to him on a platter since the day he was born.

 

It was such a strange concept all around though, to resent one for their birth. Sure, in Konoha, there were connotations to being the son of civilians or else an orphan, but many great ninjas had been orphans, and a few had even been civilian orphans, and there was no stigma surrounding their accomplishments.

 

At least, not based merely on the circumstances of their childhood.

 

Still, Ren tolerated it, more, there was some strange pleasure to be taken in being the top of every single class, competing only, as expected, with Hatake Kakashi and leaving these English bastards in the dust. Every time Ren received a score for an assignment, or praise from a professor, he made certain to turn and offer his peers a polite smile.

 

There was a joint pride in both Ren and Hatake’s successes, that two Konoha shinobi, could so easily destroy the English curriculum, no matter their own personal differences or their own internal rivalries, for now, in England, he and Hatake were truly brothers in arms.

 

And if anyone should challenge Ren in this place, even if he had the gall to be nearly four years younger than Ren, it was Hatake Kakashi.

 

* * *

 

It was a Tuesday, in the dungeon corridor, that Ren’s peers finally seemed to reach their limit. They waited, clustered together, the bigger beefier goons of Malfoy standing behind him as if they were body guards while Malfoy, Black, and a few others sneered at Ren.

 

“Well, if it isn’t the mudblood,” Malfoy sneered, “Oh look, he’s got even more books with him, isn’t it just adorable, how he’s always studying? He tries so hard! Careful, mudblood, you ever lose one of those books and you’ll be dead in the water.”

 

Ren stopped, stood still, and eyed his peers with a dull gaze. And in their place, instead of these stupid adolescent punks, he had a flashback to himself in the orphanage, and those early days in Konoha. He saw the young Tom Marvolo Riddle sneering at Lee, at Namikaze Minato, and suddenly he could see exactly what they must have seen when they looked at him.

 

His cheeks flushed, mortification growing, as he was forced to reconcile himself with what he had once been.

 

“Oh, look at that, he’s blushing!” Black crowed out in triumph to his peers, “Did we hit a nerve. Tommy?”

 

But Ren was hardly thinking about them, instead, he thought to himself, that it was a small wonder Ren could never look past those initial moments and see Ren for what he could be or even what he was right now. Every time she saw him, she must always see Black or Malfoy or anyone of these idiots as she remembered their first meeting and how he’d tried to break her fingers.

Break Eru Lee’s fingers, as if she hadn’t been capable of slaughtering grown men even at the age of six.

 

“Oh, look at that, I think he’s going to cry!” a voice cried out, but Ren was no longer even looking at them, couldn’t force himself to look at them, “Are you going to cry, ickle mudblood?”

 

How pathetic he must have looked back then, to her, no wonder she had swatted him repeatedly as one might an obnoxious fly buzzing beside her ear.

 

Namikaze Minato, he couldn’t help but think, had never made nearly as terrible an impression on her. And that, that had to make at least some difference…

 

Abruptly, Ren made to move past the blockade, in no mood to play out whatever scene they had in store for him while he had to think and come to terms with a truth that he desperately didn’t want to come to terms with.

 

None of them moved, even when Ren pushed one of Malfoy’s goons into the other with more force than perhaps was necessary, causing him to stumble out of Ren’s path.

“Hey, watch it mudblood, where do you think you’re going?!”

 

Ren paid no mind, only to jump out of the way as a bolt of light blew past him. He stopped, stood stock still, and turned, killer intent rising and eyes burning.

 

“Well,” he said slowly, “Congratulations, gentlemen, you have my attention.”

 

One of the poor bastards, Black Orion, made the mistake of laughing. Ren proceeded to, in Lee’s words, lose his shit, and beat the ever-living daylights out of the boy and send him straight to the hospital wing.

 

Somehow, it wasn’t nearly as satisfying as Ren had hoped it would be.

 

Black, in the hospital wing then outside of it, didn’t say a word, apparently the stigma of being beaten up by a clanless orphan far more terrible than the joy of watching whatever retribution was given by the authorities to Ren.

 

And now the opposition against Ren, while somewhat more silent, seemed that much weightier. Ren, for his own part, was just damn tired of it and all these people.

 

Eventually, Slughorn, Ren’s head of house, pulled him aside to jovially state, “You know, Tom, my dear boy, I’ve heard rumors of bullying and you can talk to me if you have any issues.”

 

Ren simply sat in his chair, staring blank faced at the man, unsure of how to take this except that no true figure of authority in Ren’s life had ever been half as patronizing.

 

“You have a bright future ahead of you,” the man continued, as if Ren needed this pep talk, “Don’t let your peers get in the way of that, they’ll recognize you in time, after all, that’s the nature of us Slytherins, eh?”

 

“I suppose,” Ren acquiesced when it seemed the man was waiting for him to say something.

 

“Yes, well, I am glad that you seem to be friends with young Mr. Hatake, at the very least,” Slughorn said before adding, with a rather assessing look, “Old friends? Albus says you spent some time in Japan with him before coming back to England.”

 

“Kakashi and I go way back, yes,” Ren said with a smile, not quite willing to outright call them friends. Comrades, yes, but friends, oh, oh god no.

 

“You know, you could try to make new friends, particularly friends within your own house. Mr. Hatake is indeed a brilliant boy, but he too seems rather isolated from his classmates, it’d do both of you well to branch out.”

 

That might have just been Ren’s breaking point, not the Slytherins, not the stigma, not the horrific realization that he had been little more than a stupid civilian bully when he was eight years old, but Slughorn’s pity at seeing him and Hatake as isolated loners and best friends.

 

The next morning, blank faced, before they could begin to spar or run or do anything, Ren declared, “Hatake, something must be done.”

 

“Something?” Hatake questioned but Ren paid him no mind.

 

“Slow compaigns, leading towards the madness of the intended victim, are more your area of expertise than mine, Hatake,” Ren stepped forward, grabbing the boy by his shoulders and staring into his gray eyes, “I don’t just want them bleeding, Hatake, I want them infuriated beyond all human reason, and I want them hopelessly impotent and to feel the wait of that impotence. I want each and every one of them to realize that they are stupid whining civilians without even the decency to know their place, and I want them to loathe that fact.”

 

Hatake, slowly, nodded, “Well, I too, have grown a little tired of this place.”

 

He offered Ren a blinding grin then, reached forward and grabbed Ren by his forearms, “Let’s show these civilian bitches how it’s done, Ren.”

 

* * *

 

Ren and Hatake set up a series of non-lethal, but extensively humiliating traps throughout the castle after curfew, both easily evading the patrols of prefects, professors, and the caretaker. Within the week students were dangling upside down by invisible ropes, some trapped in goo and plastered to walls like particularly tasteless pieces of art, some caught in genjutsus featuring bare breasted women that left some of the older male students in obviously incapacitated states.

 

They were never caught, and at first they weren’t even blamed, but slowly but surely the school’s attention wandered over to the pair of them.

 

Ren, personally, was loving every minute of it. Suddenly, it seemed so much clearer why Hatake was the little devil he was, if this was the kind of satisfaction he got from it on a daily basis.

 

Within only a few days, they’d forgone their early morning sparring session, to instead brainstorm with the theme of, “What would Eru Lee do?”

 

Because clearly, if there was more to be gained from the delicious humiliation of his peers, then Lee would be responsible for it.

 

“The art of being nee-san,” Hatake explained, with a wide hand-gesture an authoritative tone and the look of a visionary on his face, “Is not simply to think outside of the box but to fail to recognize a box exists at all. In other words, you have to be so surreal, that reality itself warps to you.”

 

“And how, exactly, does one accomplish that?” Ren asked.

 

“Well, it’s not simple, there is no easy way to imitate nee-san, however, one can stand in her glorious shadow from time to time,” Hatake paused, then extrapolated, “There’s a few basic guidelines, if one can reference _English_ films, books, or television shows from the twentieth century, then do.”

 

“For example, if I say, ‘Look, you stupid bastard, you’ve got no arms left!” Hatake started before motioning to Ren, “Then you obligatorily should respond, ‘It’s just a flesh wound”

 

Monty Python’s Holy Grail, Ren wasn’t sure he’d followed all of that when he’d translated for Lee, or what it’d had to do with the holy grail or King Arthur. He felt it was one of those things that had probably been better on film.

 

Still he nodded even as Hatake continued, “Second, the goal is always to get from point A to point B in the most efficient manner possible, especially if it’s in the most overpowered manner possible.”

 

“For example, say the earth is invaded by aliens,” Hatake started.

 

“Invaded by aliens?” Ren balked.

 

“Sure, why not,” Hatake said with a shrug, “The earth is invaded by aliens, our job then, is to emulate Lee in getting rid of the aliens as quickly as possible by disintegrating their ship entirely or else having it be eaten by some demonic horde. Then, while everyone is staring up in horror, we go out for pizza.”

 

“That doesn’t seem a likely scenario,” Ren commented but Hatake dismissed this.

 

“That’s the third, everything is a likely scenario, one should always pick the most obvious and simple solution, but if the obvious and simple solution is that god is screwing with everyone then god is screwing with everyone.”

 

There were a few more rules, that Hatake, had apparently taken great pains to formulate then memorize, enough so that they spent the entire morning bickering and discussing them. Still, there was something for them, because Hatake Kakashi could apparently imitate Lee with an alarming degree of accuracy.

 

One day he showed up in a black shinobi’s mask over his face, claiming to be Batman, and that he had to now protect his civilian identity. For about a week he left the mask on at all times, casting genjutsus for eating so that it appeared as if the mask remained on, and then just as suddenly the mask was abandoned with only a thousand yard stare and the explanation of, “I was not the knight they deserved but the knight they needed”, given to their peers.

 

Every day he and Ren would move the furniture in any given classroom a few inches to the left, until by the end of the week, suddenly, all of their peers had finally noticed.

 

And, perhaps best of all, after weeks of research and countering the anti-summoning jutsus and seals placed on many enchanted objects, he and Ren routinely sabotaged the great Gryffindor vs. Slytherin quidditch game by summoning and catching the snitch just as the game began, leaving the poor hapless seekers to spend hours trying to find it.

 

They’d played the game all night, looking for that damn snitch. At sunrise the referee had taken pity on them and released a new snitch onto the field. Of course, not helping was that Ren had summoned this one to himself and also shoved it into his pocket, ignoring its desperate fluttering against his fingertips.

 

Some girl from Gryffindor, a Scot by the name of McGonagall Minerva, after the game had tried to flay them for daring to tarnish the time-honored game of quidditch. It didn’t work, of course, but still points to her and Gryffindor for the sheer rage behind the effort.

 

And all this was still done while maintaining their position at the top of their classes and doing extensive research into the fields that the English academy wouldn’t cover until their third year, like fuinjutsu, and divination. Though, Hatake and Ren were both remarkably poor at that last subject, apparently neither having the ‘inner eye’ that the text books would mention.

 

(Although Hatake had taken to prophesizing the doom of his fellow students at every opportunity, often to hilarious effect.)

 

Still, both agreed, a clear late November morning, that for all their effort they still couldn’t quite match Lee’s glory.

 

“Perhaps there is simply no matching nee-san,” Hatake mused, “She is, after all, unmatchable in all the world.”  


Ren laughed slightly, shaking his head even as he agreed, “God, I wish she was here with us.”

 

“Oh, I’m sure she and the nidaime are having a grand old time,” Hatake said, before sighing, “Still, I wish she was here too. I get to see so little of her, these days.”

 

However, it wasn’t the desperate missing that Ren had been expecting, for all that he wanted to see Lee and couldn’t wait for the holidays he was… content, somehow. For some reason he wasn’t quite as lonely as he would have thought he’d been.

 

His eyes turned to Hatake, taking in his pleased grin as he thought over the misadventures of the past few weeks, and he felt himself pale. He had the sudden, horrible, realization that he and Hatake Kakashi were friends, legitimate friends, in a way that Ren had never truly been friends with anyone.

 

Minato and Lee were the closest thing that Ren had to family, and he’d hardly categorize them as friends. Even then, often he wanted less from Minato and more from Lee, to cast Minato into an easier role of an older brother and Lee into something far more close and personal than that. Tobirama-shishou was a mentor above anything else, and if he was anything at all, then perhaps a man that Ren could come to view as the father he’d never had.

 

But no one had ever been Ren’s friend.

 

And as he silently contemplated this fact, he couldn’t help but shudder at the thought of it.

 

* * *

 

Perhaps it was inevitable, after all, it was in Hatake Kakashi’s nature to push people entirely too far.

 

Just at the end of the term, amidst the golden and garish decorations for the holiday season, Ren’s pureblood Slytherin friends combined forces with their older peers to but Hatake Kakashi and Tom Marvolo Riddle into their places.

 

In the Dungeons once again, just before curfew ended, and the halls suspiciously absent of prefects Ren and Hatake found themselves surrounded by what looked like nearly all of Slytherin, their wands out and ready to confront the pair of them.

 

“Well, well, aren’t you two out a little past your bedtime?” one of them asked.

 

Ren paused, prepared to move into a stance for combat, but Kakashi held up hand, silently telling him to wait, and asked, “Who goes there?”

 

And, vague a question as this was, somehow, for some absurd reason, Ren recognized just what Kakashi was getting at and felt his lips split into a grin, turning from his peers he announced, “It is I, Arthur, son of Uther Pendragon, from the castle of Camelot. King of the Britons, defeater of the Saxons, Sovereign of all England!”

 

“Pull the other one!” Kakashi exclaimed, eyes wide, clearly disbelieving of Ren’s claim.

 

“I am, and this is my trusty servant, Patsy,” Ren said motioning behind him to the empty space that served as Patsy, “We have ridden the length and breadth of the land in search of knights who will join me in my court at Camelot. I must speak with your lord and master.”

 

“What? Ridden, on a horse?” Kakashi asked with incredulity, looking behind him towards the invisible Patsy.

 

“Yes!”

 

“You’re using coconuts!” Kakashi exclaimed, much to Ren portraying Arthur’s confusion over the issue.

 

“What?”

 

“You’ve got two empty halves of coconut and you’re bangin’ ‘em together,” Kakashi noted, only for Ren to look back at the invisible Patsy, who undoubtedly simply shrugged towards his lord and master Arthur.

 

Needless to say, at this point, their audience was deathly silent and very confused.

 

“So?” Ren asked before dismissing this, “We have ridden since the snows of winter covered this land, through the kingdom of Merica, through…”

 

“Where’d you get the coconuts?” Kakashi interjected.

 

“We found them.”

 

“Found them? In Merica? The coconut’s tropical!” Kakashi exclaimed in, possibly, even more disbelieve than before.

 

The audience shifted, began to mutter to one another in hushed English, looking now entirely uncertain as both Ren and Kakashi embraced their self-selected roles.

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“Well, this is a temperate zone,” Kakashi said as if this explained everything having to do with the invisible coconuts.

 

“The swallow may fly south with the sun or the house martin or the plover may seek warmer climates in winter, yet these are not strangers to our land?”

 

“Are you suggest coconuts migrate?” Kakashi asked, rather rhetorically, only for Ren to shift as he considered his own answer.

 

“Not at all. They could be carried.”

 

Kakashi balked, “What? A swallow carrying a coconut?”

 

“It could grip it by the husk!”

 

“It’s not a question of where he grips it! It’s a simple question of weight ratios! A five-ounce bird could not carry a one pound coconut.”

 

“Well, it doesn’t matter. Will you go and tell your master that Arthur from the Court of Camelot is here?”

 

Kakashi ignored Ren’s demand and continued, “Listen, in order to maintain air-speed velocity, a swallow needs to beat its wings forty-three times every second, right?”

 

“Please!”

 

“Am I right?” Kakashi pressed, his eyes bright, even as the audience began to get impatient.

 

“I’m not interested!” Ren exclaimed, pulling at his hair and perhaps getting a little too in character.

 

“But way, it could be carried by an African swallow, maybe, but not a European swallow, but then African swallows aren’t migratory…”

 

This appeared to be the breaking point for their audience, much as it was Arthur’s breaking point in The Holy Grail, and the mob moved forward with wands pointed out, forcing Ren and Kakashi to madly dash ahead and retreat into the girl’s dungeon bathroom.

 

“Well, I think that went rather well,” Kakashi noted, “And good show having Monty Python memorized, I wasn’t sure you would.”

 

“I didn’t know I had it memorized either,” Ren confessed, certainly he’d never tested it out before today.

 

“So, how many bones should we break. Minimal, I think, England seems to frown on that,” Kakashi noted.

 

“Oh, yes, they did not like what happened to Black,” Ren said with a nod even as his eyes glanced around the girl’s bathroom, and eventually landed on an oddly shaped faucet that looked rather like a snake, and barely realizing it he found himself hissing out, “ _You’d think I’d have cut him open._ ”

 

“Was that supposed to mean something, I just heard hissing…” Kakashi started, but before he could finish the wall next to the sink began to open up and reveal a dark stairwell leading beneath the castle.

 

Ren and Kakashi looked at one another, then looked back down into the dark, where, apparently, the kekki genkai Lee claimed was near useless, had just opened a hole in the wall.

 

“Strike beating up our English peers,” Hatake Kakashi said slowly, “What do you say we impersonate Jones Indiana instead?”

 

* * *

 

Ren and Kakashi stepped off the train to meet Tobirama-shishou and Eru Lee, standing there waiting for them in winter apparel as if they’d never left the platform. At the sight or the pair of them stepping off the train, grinning, and looking far more at ease in each other’s presence than they had even a few months before, Lee and Tobirama-shishou exchanged glances.

 

“So, is _Hogwarts_ still standing?” Lee asked.

 

“Oh, yes, of course,” Kakashi quickly reassured her, “Very much still standing and not on fire.”

 

Ren grinned, “However, that said, we’ve made something of a… discovery.”

 

“Oh, sweet Jesus,” Lee exclaimed, but neither Ren nor Kakashi paid any mind. Instead Ren took her hand, “Lee, if you’d do us the honors of apparting outside of _Hogwarts_ , please.”

 

Lee exchanged another wary glance towards Tobirama-shishou, who sighed, and gave a small nod, then the four of them were just outside the gates of Hogwarts, Ren and Kakashi motioning for the others to follow, running overtop the snow, while they navigated their way towards the cave just outside the forbidden forest that served as the back entrance to the great chamber.

 

Ren, waving a hand, ushered them inside, grinning all the way until they finally came across the main portion of the chamber, and the sleeping basilisk.

 

“Holy shit,” Lee exclaimed.

 

“It’s called a _basilisk_ , and I’ve decided my future clan is going to breed these nin-snakes like the Inuzaka’s do their nin-dogs,” a task, apparently, which had been labelled a forbidden technique by England but was also more or less easily done, involving a rooster, a toad, and a bit of English jutsus. And he could just picture it now, his and Lee’s future auburn-haired children, and their army of terrifyingly oversized snakes who could kill simply by looking at a person, whose poison was incurable by all but a miracle.

 

“And,” Kakashi added, “Since I was there at the time of the discovery, I shall be a lieutenant of this dread snake army.”


	4. Chapter 4

They ended up spending the holidays in the London townhouse on the west side in London’s magical district that Tobirama-shishou had bought in Konoha and the Senju clan’s name. Outside the window, all the iron street lamps were decorated with wreathes, candles, and ornaments, the trees with tiny floating lights like little stars caught in their branches.

 

Ren found himself sitting against the glass, back turned to the fire and the overzealous tree that Lee had found and decorated herself much to the amusement of Tobirama-shishou as well as Ren himself and Kakashi, his eyes drifting down the cheery lane that enveloped all the warmth of Christmas that he himself had never truly believed in.

 

And why should he have?

 

Christmas, for Tom Riddle, had always been a disappointing and depressing affair. The orphans would receive gifts, second hand and donated by nuns or else whatever organization could spare enough pity to feel charitable during a depression. There had always been a feeling of forced gratitude, of forced warmth and family, as if Tom and the others should take what they were offered and be damned grateful as it was the closest to a real Christmas that any of them were ever going to get.

 

Thus, Tom Riddle had made it a point of loathing Christmas.

 

That he later, in whatever capacity he could at only eight years old, declared himself a staunch atheist was almost beside the point.

 

However, this warm Christmas, returned for a few weeks from Hogwarts with Kakashi, here in this London townhouse with Senju Tobirama, Lee, and even Hatake Kakashi with all the luxuries he had never dreamed of possessing in England, Ren felt…

 

He felt the echoes of all those Christmases he had hated, but more, that this moment had somehow been echoed in them. That this was the Christmas that all those other Christmases had attempted and failed to emulate.

 

For once in his life, Ren thought as he stared through his own reflection to the street outside, he was happy.

 

“So, Ren, what’s so fascinating about the view?”

 

He turned, there was Lee next to him, dressed in a strange mix of pragmatic Konoha clothing along with cheery ridiculous holiday English wizard garb. Lee was always like that during December though, he thought with a smile, for whatever reason, Lee took Christmas entirely too seriously.

 

Especially in a place where nobody even knew what Christmas was beyond that strange month where Lee started giving friends and acquaintances gifts.

 

“Nothing,” Ren said with a smile, “I just rarely saw this part of _London_ growing up. Only half a city away and I still never really got out of the east side.”

 

Lee nodded thoughtfully, noting with a musing sort of expression, “Well, that’s hardly surprising, I rarely got out of _Surrey_ when I lived in _England_.”

 

Yes, he thought to himself as he stared at her, sometimes he forgot how eerily similar to his own childhood Lee’s first four years of life had been. She hadn’t been in an orphanage, by any means, but none the less the details she’d let slip sounded entirely too familiar.

 

With that thought his mind turned, passed over Christmas and into the new year, when he’d be twelve years old, “Lee, do you think Kakashi and I will be going back to _Hogwarts_ for our second term?”

 

Lee sighed, apparently feeling aggravation on Ren’s behalf at having to deal with a bunch of civilian children, “Well, that is the question, isn’t it? For now, I’d say yes, three months is hardly long enough time to make headway into research or networking, the nidaime certainly seems to think as much. And given that he is the team lead on this…”

 

Ren had figured, he hadn’t outright asked, but since they hadn’t started packing, and Tobirama-shishou had said nothing about going home one way or another it seemed clear that Ren and Hatake Kakashi were at least finishing out the year.

 

Which, he supposed was fine, they had the basilisk to deal with after all and getting it somehow out of the castle without killing someone was sure to be a task and a half. Plus, there were still their studies though Ren and Kakashi were almost painfully ahead of their classmates at this point.

 

More, in Konoha, those who had excelled had always been challenged further in the academy. Everyone agreed that a shinobi’s, even an academy student’s, idle hands were never a good thing. If you were advanced enough you were moved forward grades and graduated early, as had been the case for both Ren and Kakashi. However, in England they appeared to have no such concerns, the lessons were the lessons, it didn’t matter if you mastered it on the first try or had mastered it months beforehand.

 

Thus, in most classes, Kakashi and he were often given busy work when they’d completed the assignment, told to study further in some corner out of struggling students’ way. Sometimes, they were even told to aid their classmates, Ren suffering the indignity of trying to teach either Crabbe or Goyle to turn a matchstick into a needle all while Ren’s insufferable pureblood peers sneered at him for thinking himself good enough to teach those sacks of civilian meat anything. Those were the good classes, even, as Dumbledore would have them sit quietly at their desks and silently wait for each godforsaken minute to pass them by, as if learning ahead was something to be punished.

 

Either way, there was certainly no talk of promoting either Ren or Hatake Kakashi into the next year of the Hogwarts curriculum.

 

“That bad?” Lee asked.

 

“No,” Ren said quickly, removing any hint of a grimace from his features, “Not that bad just… _English_.”

 

Lee laughed at the pun, likely one only she would truly appreciate, and Ren offered her an amused smile in turn. She was always so beautiful when she smiled…

 

She was fifteen now, he thought to himself. At once the age difference between them eleven to fifteen, soon to be twelve to fifteen, seemed both shorter than before and all the more immense. Lee was slowly but steadily approaching adulthood whereas Ren was now in the midst of adolescence.

 

Would she wait? Would she wait long enough for Ren to be at least sixteen, a jonin, and herself twenty, when the gap itself wouldn’t be so immense? Would Namikaze Minato give her or Ren the option of waiting?

 

“Well, perhaps it’s better not to get too attached,” Lee said, pulling Ren back into this present moment of the warm firelight and Lee sitting on the window beside him, “After all, given the war, we may very well be pulled home at any moment.”

 

That was hardly, Ren thought, a reason to be grateful for.

 

And if they did leave, him and Hatake Kakashi for war, he doubted any one of their peers would notice or even care. What an impression, he bitterly thought, he and Hatake had managed to make on that place.

 

He sighed and turned from the window fully. There, lounging on the couch reading through one of the stacks and stacks of books that had migrated from the library into the living room was tiny Hatake Kakashi, near to him, head buried in three different books at once, was Senju Tobirama.

 

Yes, for all that he didn’t necessarily look forward to the coming semester and all the Hogwarts wizards, he didn’t necessarily wish for war either.

 

There was a knock then on the door.

 

Four heads lifted at once, shifted towards the sound, Lee spared Tobirama-shishou a glance that asked who the devil would come to find them and at such a late hour. Apparently, while Ren and Kakashi had been blissfully ignorant off at school, Lee and Tobirama-shishou had had a number of run ins with the wizarding police force, the aurors, over breaking the statute of secrecy and magically misusing muggle artifacts (whatever the hell either of those even meant).

 

They each stood, hands readying themselves to find weapons or begin jutsus as Lee, with a forced casualness as she strolled closest to the door, opened the door with a mere swish of her fingers. There, on the doorstep, a light dusting of snow on the shoulders of his dark overcoat and his hat, was a single unfamiliar man.

 

He was… At once he was dressed like an English wizard and yet not in the same moment. His overcoat was longer than what Ren himself would have been familiar with, but there was a sleek styling to it, the shine to his oxford shoes, and a style to his hat that also did not seem out of place in the civilian side of the West End.

 

He removed his hat, revealing golden hair the color of wheat in the summer sun, his eyes a brilliant and strange golden color, and his smile white, wide, and so very charming, “ _Evening, I hope I am not disturbing you._ ”

 

“ _Funny, I didn’t think the late 30’s had Jehovah’s Witnesses,_ ” Lee said dully in English and promptly, wordlessly, wandlessly, and with only the flick of her fingers slammed the door in the man’s face surprised face.

 

Tobirama slowly but surely turned to glare at Lee.

 

“What?” Lee asked in the sudden awkward silence, “Oh, come on nidaime-sama, do you really want to switch religions?”

 

He didn’t answer that, didn’t appear to deem the question one worthy of an answer, and instead he just continued to glare at the completely unrepentant Eru Lee. Another, slightly more hesitant and awkward knock sounded at the door.

 

For a moment, Lee glared almost balefully back at Tobirama-shishou, before with a sigh and a roll of her eyes, she opened it once again with a cheery grin, “ _My superior officer demands that we seriously listen to whatever you’re selling. Just know that I, personally, think you’re being a bit shameless trying to do it so close to Christmas._ ”

 

The man, still with his hat in his hand, and a slight annoyed spark to his eyes quickly smiled again and barked out a laugh at Lee’s entirely serious statement, “ _Ah, no, I’m afraid I’m no muggle salesman or religious zealot. Though, I suppose my timing could have been better._ ”

 

The man then held out his hand, towards Lee who was a good five feet from the door, too far for her or his hands to reach. However, he didn’t seem affronted by the distance, in fact, he seemed mildly amused by it, “ _Forgive me, my name is Gellert Grindelwald, and I’ve wanted to meet you and your companions for some time now. Do you mind if I come in?_ ”

 

For a moment Lee turned to Tobirama-shishou, red eyebrows raised, clearly more than willing to slam the door in his face a second time. For that single moment there was the possibility that it would end there, that this Grindelwald Gellert would return from whence he came. However, Senju Tobirama with arms now thoughtfully crossed, considering the man, his chakra, his posture, gave a small nod allowing the man to step inside.

 

And just like that the moment was gone.

 

* * *

 

The man, soon enough, was set up in a chair beside the fireplace, Tobirama-shishou seated across from him while Ren, Lee, and Kakashi loitered behind his chair. If this discomfited the man, as it would have Dumbledore Albus, he gave no sign of it.

 

Instead, oddly at ease with his legs crossed, holding a cup of tea, he smiled across at them. A warm, and again rather charming, expression that highlighted the aristocratic handsomeness of his features.

 

He began in English, his voice smooth and his accent polished with just a hint of something foreign from the continent, “Forgive me, again, I realize this is both rude and sudden, but I figured it would be best to wait until the boys were back from Hogwarts. Then you pulled your disappearing act, presumably to _Konohagakure_ , and well here we are.”

 

A quick, more genuine smile, a flash of those white teeth, and he explained, “I am what you might call… a man of influence, certainly abroad if not here in England, and though I hold no official position in any government, well aside from being on the board of a few schools here and there, I am not without power.”

 

“Naturally,” he said nodding towards them, “When I heard of this _Konohagakure_ , your sudden introduction to England and Hogwarts, as well as your own current difficulties with the statute of secrecy and the English government in general I was overcome by curiosity as well as the need to introduce myself.”

 

“Heard from who?” Tobirama-shishou asked with pale raised eyebrows but Grindelwald hardly seemed threatened by this, again he looked somewhat amused by the question, as if it seemed almost funny to him that he should have not heard of their arrival.

 

Everything about him, Ren thought almost in a daze, was a controlled yet casual sophistication in grace. Even by sitting still he drew in the eye with an unseen charisma unsupported by even the slightest of genjutsus. However, despite the glamor of his appearance there was also a sense of something raw beneath, great amounts of chakra that was not to be underestimated even in a wizard versus a shinobi.

 

There was a captivating air of both intrigue and danger about him.

 

“Here and there, you’ll find that wizards love gossip, Mr. Senju,” he said with that same, almost seductive, smile.

 

“As for your governmental troubles, well, those I could have guessed,” the man said with an almost exasperated sigh, “You’ve come at a bad time, I’m afraid. You see a great muggle war, and a war of our own, just ended only a decade ago. We’ve been walking on eggshells ever since, our paranoia against the muggles and foreigners heightened. The very idea of a wizarding community which exists outside of the statute of secrecy is an anathema to us at the moment, no matter how relatively young the statute truly is.”

 

At Lee’s raised eyebrows he smiled again, “The statue of secrecy is the agreement, mostly between the magical states of the western world, that magic be kept secret from our muggle counterparts. However, that said, the agreement itself is only a few centuries old.”

 

Only a few centuries… The clan wars, the elemental nations themselves, those were only a few centuries old. However, this man did not seem to realize how long a few centuries could seem.

 

Tobirama-shishou asked, “That’s all well and good, but why in particular did that make you interested in us?”

 

“Is natural curiosity not enough?” Grindelwald asked with a laugh, and the laugh too was inviting, as all his movements and expressions were. On seeing Tobirama-shishou’s unmoved expression he set aside his tea, a spark of excitement entering his golden eyes, “Imagine it from my perspective, if you will, Mr. Senju. You are a well-traveled and well-learned man, consider yourself well acquainted even with cultures considered relatively exotic by your own people, when suddenly, one day, four strange wizards from a part of Japan you have never heard of arrive in England. They practice a brand of magic, wandless, that you have never heard of and further, have no concept of the statute of secrecy. Instead live in some strange country where muggles and wizards alike live and are aware of one another, an idea unthinkable by far too many of my own countrymen. Would you not travel to meet these people yourself?”

 

They would, they had, they had taken Ren’s invitation to Hogwarts and invited Hatake Kakashi along for the ride. Still, Ren had never really thought of it from their perspective, at least, not like that.

 

Except, Ren paused, voiced his rebuttal aloud, “Albus Dumbledore, Hogwarts Deputy Director, wasn’t eager to meet with us.”

 

There was a flash of… something, in Grindelwald’s golden eyes, something feral and dark that made his eyes resemble that of a wolf or dragon. Then it was gone, and a faded nostalgia had taken its place, “Ah, Albus, he and I were once dear friends. However, Albus… He has become a complicated man, since I knew him. Unfortunate circumstances robbed him of all the dreams, ambitions, and even ideals he once held.”

 

He paused, regarded Ren specifically, golden eyes seeming to burn through him and see to the heart of Ren, then said, “I won’t say that he has become cold, perhaps even paranoid, in these later years but I will say that he regards foreign concepts, things bordering dangerous and violent, with far more concern and wariness than he once would have. He forgets that different does not necessarily mean wrong.”

 

Yes, yes it was wariness with which he had always regarded Kakashi and Ren, a cold distance that had at first read as a normal shinobi’s paranoia but then had read as something entirely different. The man had, never once, expected anything good of Kakashi or Ren.

 

“I realize, of course, why you reached out to Albus, it was a natural and understandable first step, but I’m afraid it was the entirely wrong thing to do,” Grindelwald said, sipping at his tea once again, “Albus has grown skittish, and he is more or less representative of England itself. They will always hold you at arms-length, reprimand you as stupid barbarians for not carrying wands, muggles for having studied martial arts, and may one day even expel you from the country should you edge the statute of secrecy too closely.”

 

He stopped, paused, eyes drifting to Lee now, landing on her and lingering, if only for a moment, on her red hair and her too green eyes, “I know that you had, when you arrived, sought magical schooling for Miss Eru, and that she was deemed too old for the Hogwarts curriculum.” Gold eyes drifted to Kakashi, “Similarly, though it’s hardly my place to say, I suspect you forged the papers declaring Mr. Hatake as eleven years old.”

 

At Kakashi’s raised eyebrows the man merely smirked, as if a joke had just been relayed between the pair of them. However, he did not pause, merely continued in that even captivating voice, “I doubt you realize this, it is not often discussed in England where Hogwarts is king, but there are many magical schools in Europe, many with different curriculums. I, for example, am on the board of directors of the Scandinavian wizarding school Durmstrang, where I myself went to school, and am good friends with the headmaster. If you are interested, I can enroll Miss Eru as well as transfer Mr. Hatake and Mr. Riddle there before the second semester even begins. I suspect that you would find your experiences at Durmstrang to be far more rewarding.”

 

A… different magical school? No, no one had talked about that inside Hogwarts, though he supposed it would be somewhat gauche to talk about other wizarding schools while attending Hogwarts.

 

However, he found himself wondering, “But what’s the difference?”

 

“Many things, Durmstrang is,” here Grindelwald paused in amusement before selecting his word, “I suppose I shall call it infamous, for teaching the dark arts where Hogwarts and France’s Beauxbatons shy from such practices. And the dark arts are often practices that one cannot find in English books.”

 

He nodded towards the coffee table, stacked with books filled with English jutsus, more than implying that what Durmstrang had to offer would not be something Tobirama-shishou could casually learn for himself.

 

That, certainly for Tobirama-shishou, would be a hook. However, otherwise, what did it get them? Could a school really make so much of a difference for them? Even if it was in Sweden, Denmark, or Norway versus in Scotland?

 

Especially when Ren and Lee themselves were English.

 

They had barely made headway with Great Britain, was now really the time to be looking towards the greater part of Europe?

 

“I’m not saying you should decide now, in a few days is enough, but do think about it,” the man stood, passed a white calling card into Tobirama’s hand with an address on it, “My London address, for the floo.”

 

* * *

 

They spent most of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day discussing it, Durmstrang, Hogwarts, fact checking and arguing and fact checking again. It became clear that, at least from what Lee and Tobirama-shishou could find, that the man had not been lying. There really was a school called Durmstrang, reviled by many English for teaching these dark jutsus, which was located somewhere on the northern tip of either Sweden or Norway, an unplottable location intended to confuse enemy nin.

 

Otherwise the English seemed to mostly disregard the place, the idea of attending a school other than Hogwarts inconceivable to them. The only draw being these dark jutsus, and that any wizard who went for that reason was vile and part of the aristocratic rot.

 

Dark jutsus, many of Ren’s Slytherin housemates had talked of them with a sort of reverence, though had rarely explained what they were. They had an entire class, Defense Against the Dark Arts, whose entire point was to counter these dark jutsus and provide self-defense. Yet the definition of dark jutsus was always hazy. More, merely asking after them had been enough to earn Hatake Kakashi a detention in the first few weeks.

 

Still, many of Konoha’s jutsus, many of Tobirama-shishou’s jutsus in particular, seemed to fall into this dark category.

 

Ren wondered, sometimes, if he’d had the right pedigree of if Hatake Kakashi had been in Slytherin in his place, if some of those Konoha jutsus could have been used to entice his Slytherin housemates. Somehow though, he doubted it, they talked big certainly, but he doubted they really had the stomach for what they called dark.

 

Christmas day, far too late into the evening they finally reached an impasse in bickering. “I think,” Tobirama-shishou said slowly as he rubbed at his eyes, “That we may need to talk to this Grindelwald again.”

 

“Why?” Lee scoffed, dismissively, “We know what he wants, he’s clearly pro _Durmstrang_ for everybody.”

 

“None the less,” Tobirama-shishou cut in, sending her a chiding glance, “He’s the only one we’ve run into who seems to have attended this wizarding school versus _Hogwarts_. More, thus far, he’s been the only one willing to talk _English_ politics with us let alone the politics of _Europe_.”

 

So, with that there was little else to do but the mismatched four of them, ranging all ages from child to adult, to meet with Grindelwald Gellert at a restaurant at his choice. It was a glass greenhouse type setting, artificially warmer and filled with plants that England, let alone an English winter, could not support. Inside little birds tweeted and sung out sweet melodies, melodies somehow more wonderous than their non-magical counterparts could create.

 

On the whole, this café, while emulating the street side cafés of Italy or Spain or France, had a more elegant, sophisticated, and likely far more expensive air about it than the Leaky Cauldron had possessed. Grindelwald Gellert, in another dark suit, with his hat, overcoat, scarf, and gloves hung up upon a rack, seemed perfectly at home in this environment.

 

“Funny,” Kakashi noted in English as the five of them had taken their seats, “I had thought the English were mostly fond of pubs.”

 

“Ah, it’s true that the Leaky Cauldron and the like are generally more popular with the local population,” Grindelwald said with that charming easy smile, “And certainly, those venues have their charms. However, I won’t deny that I personally enjoy the finer things in life a little too much to be truly at home in the Leaky Cauldron.”

 

No, he couldn’t imagine Grindelwald Gellert ill at ease, but amidst the chaos and drunken revelry of the Leaky Cauldron, Ren imagined there would be a quiet and dangerous tension about him that he too often covered with sophistication and suave.

 

Like he’d said, Ren didn’t think he’d be at home in a place like the Leaky Cauldron. Which all too likely marked him as the foreigner Grindelwald Gellert undoubtedly was.

 

“Right, well, I suppose I’ll cut to the chase,” Lee said as she steepled her hands together, “I won’t deny we’re interested, that said, war is brewing among your civilian counterparts and while I trust Sweden to remain neutral I’m not holding out hope for Norway. With that, that’s a lot of continents between here and there and can you really guarantee us that you wizards won’t be caught up in this war like you were the last?”

 

“That’s an oddly specific prediction to make,” Grindelwald noted as he looked at her, both amusement and curiosity in them once again as he regarded her, “Regarding Norway and Sweden that is. None the less, while our wars often… line up with our muggle counterparts we tend to fight over far different reasons and often make far different alliances. Just because the muggle Germany feels the need to become Rome reborn does not necessarily mean that wizarding Germany will follow.”

 

Ren supposed there was logic in that, even Lee, though frowning, did seem slightly swayed by this.

 

“However, even the muggles are not officially at war yet,” Grindelwald dismissed with a wave of his hand, “Instead I think you should be asking yourselves a more intrinsic question, ‘Why should we ally ourselves with the English?”

 

He then motioned to their surrounding tables, and Ren had the slightest cold sensation, that of a genjutsu, as the man dimmed their conversation to others and directed their attention away from their small table, “These people will do you no favors, they haven’t in the year or so you’ve been here. You will fight tooth and nail for any recognition you have, and even then you still might not get anything from it. You have no need to be attached to these people, indeed, it’s in your best interest not to be. With that, tell me, why not attend Durmstrang?”

 

“I don’t do well in cold, it makes my nose run and my feet very cold.” Kakashi drily responded, as if this was a completely legitimate response to this question.

 

“Ah, yes, I can see why your professors love you,” Grindelwald said with a laugh and a somewhat tight grin, “That’s what heating charms are for though, Mr. Hatake.”

 

“Regardless, England is… Well, the people don’t want to admit it, and even those who admit it do so for entirely wrong reasons, but it is a country relying on a broken system,” the man motioned to Lee and Ren in particular, “Take Mr. Riddle and Miss Eru, here, an extremely talented wizard and witch respectively, and yet both so overlooked that they went missing for years and, for lack of better term please pardon the one I choose, were drafted into a foreign country’s magical militia. Now, when they’ve returned, one is completely barred admission for the crime of returning to England after her twelfth birthday. Tell me, what sane country could that possibly happen in?”

 

No one said anything, there was nothing to say. For the first time in months, someone from England, or rather, from Europe, was finally speaking words that made fundamental sense. Echoing the arguments, they themselves had had repeatedly on how England could be so fundamentally incompetent in the first place.

 

Finally, a single voice of sanity had asked their own question back at them.

 

Slowly, but surely, Kakashi began to clap.

 

Grindelwald Gellert held up a hand with an amused smile and small chuckle, “Please, you’re too kind, Mr. Hatake. I hardly deserve a standing ovation for a small and undeniable truth.”

 

With the last of Kakashi’s applause Grindelwald started again, “Now, I’m not going to lie to you, the magical communities of Scandinavia and Eastern Europe are hardly more enlightened, in fact, in some senses they may be less. None the less, I myself, and other individuals I like to think of as enlightened like myself, have far more influence and power there than here. We would not shut our doors to _Konohagakure_ merely for the crime of being foreign.”

 

“But why are you so interested in _Konoha_?” Lee pressed, leaning forward and peering at his face, as if she could somehow read the answer just by looking at him closely enough.

 

“How on earth could I not be?” he asked, genuinely too, as if Konoha was endlessly fascinating to him, “I eluded to this last time, but remember, I am from a world where to even question the statute of secrecy is heresy. We are at an age where it is unthinkable to live without it, and yet, here you are from a world where it is not only possible but unthinkable to come into existence. The differences in our magic, your lack of wands, well that only adds to my interest. Believe me, I know I’m not being subtle in my attempts to draw you eastward, but I very much hope at least one of you does attend Durmstrang if only to satisfy my own overwhelming curiosity.”

 

He laughed sipping from the tea delivered to his place, shaking his head fondly at himself, “I know, I seem ridiculous, all this effort for mere curiosity and yet curiosity can drive a man to great heights every now and then. Yes, my curiosity has always taken me strange places…”

 

* * *

 

Afterwards, returning to the townhouse, they sat around the kitchen table with the memory of Grindelwald Gellert’s words haunting them.

 

“We still have to take care of that giant snake,” Lee noted as she stared down at her cup of green tea, similar to Konoha’s yet still so different, “God knows why the _English_ want a giant, highly venomous, snake that kill you just by looking you in the eye in the basement of their academy.”

 

“Sending one or two or you to _Durmstrang_ does not preclude dealing with the basilisk,” Tobirama-shishou countered, “If we do send you to _Durmstrang_ , Lee, then either Ren or Kakashi can take care of the snake.”

 

“I believe you mean Ren,” Kakashi interjected, “I don’t think the giant snake found me worthy.”

 

This was true, as only Ren’s kekki genkai, labeling him as a speaker and master of serpants, had saved Kakashi from being eaten alive when they’d first wandered down there. It hadn’t necessarily been Jones Indiana but it had still been an adventure and a half getting down to that place from the girl’s bathroom.

 

“Besides, the snake will live, according to the books _basilisks_ can stay alive for centuries, so we certainly have time to deal with it,” Tobirama-shishou said with a shrug, “That’s not a pressing issue.”

 

Durmstrang, unspoken, was.

 

Finally, curiously dry mouthed, Ren spoke, “I… can’t make progress in _Slytherin_ , in _Hogwarts_ even. With networking, I mean. Because I’m not from a clan, because I’m foreign in everything but blood, they’ll never take me seriously.”

 

Kakashi’s eye, dark in the lighting, fell on Ren but Ren did not look back, they both knew how painfully true his words were.

 

Ren continued with more determination, looking straight at Tobirama-shishou, “ _Hogwarts_ isn’t dangerous, we’ve been there three months, one of us could certainly handle it alone. It wouldn’t be enjoyable, but it could be done. We know nothing about _Durmstrang_ , even Lee, we shouldn’t be sending alone. Lee and I should go to _Durmstrang_ , Kakashi can stay at _Hogwarts_.”

 

“How magnanimous of you,” Kakashi noted with a dry snort, unamused by the prospect of being thrown under the bus for Ren to abandon him with Lee for Durmstrang. Still, he didn’t object, so clearly, he understood what Ren had been getting at.

 

Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t really disagree.

 

“And the _basilisk_?” Kakashi asked, “Because I’m not dealing with that, Ren.”

 

“The summer, we can come back and get it then,” Ren said, “Would probably be better anyway without other students there.”

 

Besides, Ren… He didn’t know why, especially in that moment, but he didn’t like the idea of Lee going alone. At least last time Tobirama-shishou had been with her, and at least she had been in London, on the same island. All the way in Scandanavia anything at all could happen to her.

 

He just didn’t like the idea of her being sent on her own.

 

Still, apparently Ren’s reasoning was enough for Tobirama-shishou, because the man agreed quickly enough, and it was settled. January Kakashi would be back at Hogwarts, while Ren and Lee, they’d be off in Durmstrang with Tobirama shishou a central outside point in London.

 

* * *

 

The journey itself was at once rather swift and rather long, it started with Lee and Ren teleporting to Oslo where they met by none other than Grindelwald Gellert himself. The man cheerfully greeted them, shaking both of their hands, looking sleek and elegant even when dressed in thicker layers for the colder Norwegian winter.

 

From there the three of them chartered a small magical vessel, one which Grindelwald steered, which would take them to Durmstrang.

 

“Durmstrang takes its secrecy very seriously,” Grindelwald explained early into their journey as Lee and Ren stared out at the Norwegian coastline swiftly flowing by them, “Only alumni and students no where to find it, any visitors have the location wiped from their memory, so to the outside world it is merely somewhere at the very tip of Norway or Sweden.”

 

“You enjoyed your time there then?” Ren asked, and the man had nodded and smiled at the question as well as the memories it brought up.

 

“Oh yes, very much so. I often find myself thinking back to the mountains in winter and the lake, rivers, and sea in the summer,” he then paused, somewhat awkwardly, a dark shadow of regret crossing his features, “Of course, I didn’t get to finish.”

 

“You dropped out?” Lee asked, turning her head to look at him. And for a moment, but just a moment, Ren couldn’t help but feel that Grindelwald stared at her for a tick too long. Then the moment was gone and everything was perfectly ordinary once again.

 

“Hardly,” he said with a laugh, “If you must know I was expelled for experimentation in the dark arts.”

 

He said this so casually, almost a forced casualness, as if to force Lee and Ren’s eyes away from what that statement truly meant. That Grindelwald Gellert’s government and academy had once considered him too dangerous to be a wizard, had essentially made him a missing nin even before he finished.

 

He motioned towards the coastline with a golden hand, as if this in itself was representative of the people who lived there, “You see, all governments are filled with hypocrites and cowardly fools, they will always bend in the face of power. Then I was a student, easily taken care of and dismissed when I made them uncomfortable. Now, however, I have a seat on the board with enough influence to get them to accept two foreign transfer students.”

 

That seemed to be the end of that, as far as his expulsion was concerned. He did not explain what these dark jutsus were and both Ren and Lee knew better than to ask. Instead the topic of conversation over the day drifted from here and there.

 

At one point he talked about his own dreams and ambitions, about a world in which the statute of secrecy was abolished, where the idea of memory wiping was a crime and instead wizards, witches, and muggles could live without these artificial borders they had created for themselves.

 

And Ren, as he watched and listened, felt this niggling unease. The man was almost too charming. Ren liked him, found himself often drawn into the man’s words and conversation, the very way he held himself through charisma alone. However, Lee, Lee who rarely watched anyone, kept an eye on the man too.

 

Though her face was always inscrutable, her eyes sharp, bright and green, Ren couldn’t help but feel unnerved.

 

“So, out of curiosity, what are you favorite subjects?” Grindelwald asked, the castle he said only a few minutes away now.

 

“English _jutsus_ and our _jutsus_ hardly line up,” Lee said with a small and rather sardonic smile, “Nonetheless, I am wholeheartedly a fan of _ninjutsu_ , though technically a _genjutsu_ and _ninjutsu_ specialist.”

 

“Ah, I’m afraid I’m going to need translations for those,” the man said, his attention, his eyes, fully focused on Lee.

 

“ _Ninjutsu_ is… it covers almost all aspects of your magic, anything you use the wand for really. _Genjutsu_ roughly translates to illusions.”

 

“And you’re good at illusions?”

 

Lee grinned, her shark-like and rather dangerous grin that would have had any sane man on edge, “Oh, Mr. Grindelwald, I am very good at illusions.”

 

Grindelwald just smiled back, that spark back in his eyes, and then turned expectantly to Ren himself.

 

“ _Ninjutsu_ and _genjutsu_ are also specialties of mine,” he said, “I also work with _fuinjutsu_ , which is essentially our version of Runes, and medical _jutsus_ as well. At Hogwarts I liked all my classes, though Defense was my favorite.”

 

“Good, I also was very fond of Defense when I took it,” Grindelwald said with a smile that, at the very sight of it, somehow lit Ren’s insides with a warm appreciative glow. The kind when Tobirama-shishou had approved of his work or Lee had smiled at him.

 

“Of course, given your foreign background, and your lack of background with our magic Miss Eru, I’m afraid you’ll have to put up with me more than your classmates,” then, catching each of their eyes, he explained, “I will be tutoring the pair of you separately, to help bring you up to speed and up to speed with the language, my punishment for being so pushy with the board.”

 

“You don’t need to…” Lee started but Grindelwald did not even let her finish.

 

“Oh, don’t mind me, I was trying to be funny,” Grindelwald said with a laugh, “I’ll enjoy tutoring and teaching again, it’s been ages since I’ve had the opportunity.”

 

And that, was apparently that, as he pointed instead, leaning forward, “There, just beyond this curve, the castle should be coming into view.”

 

And indeed, as they took a curve on the coast line, passing through an arch, they saw a castle, not quite as large as Hogwarts, only four stories tall, looming in front of them with the backdrop of the sea, lakes, and mountains all glittering in the twilight.

 

He had thought Hogwarts was breathtaking.

 

“Yes,” Grindelwald said softly as Lee and Ren rushed towards the bow to get a better look, “Cherish the sight, it’s one few will ever behold and even fewer remember.”

 

* * *

 

There were no houses in Durmstrang, when Lee and Ren arrived they were instead placed into a randomized dormitory with rooms next to one another. More, Tom Riddle’s name was summarily abandoned once again for Ren at Grindelwald Gellert’s polite insistence after Ren had told him his preference. Even from the start he was more at ease with this strange new school than he’d been at Hogwarts.

 

That first night, the night before classes were to begin again, Gellert spent it showing them around the grounds. Highlighting this and that classroom, famous paintings, escorting them through the winter gardens and it was like the man had been a student himself only yesterday.

 

Wherever they went though, people stopped and stared to look at him, as if Grindelwald Gellert was important, far more than a man who merely had influence at a school, even the premier wizarding school of Scandinavia. Lee said nothing to this, merely gave Ren a look halfway through, as if to send her silent agreement to all these nagging suspicions running through his head.

 

What they meant though was beyond him, just that Grindelwald was not quite what he seemed, whatever it was he had seemed to start with.

 

Still, soon enough, classes were starting, Ren at his head for the most part with only a few bumps in the road in playing catch up in the subjects Hogwarts had not covered such as the dark arts and alchemy and also getting used to the language charm that Grindelwald had provided for them. And even in those classes, he found them endlessly fascinating, and with quick study began to catch up to his peers and excel in them as well.

 

However, even early in, that nagging feeling of something being amiss stuck with him. Early in, casually during a conversation at the dinner table, he learned that muggleborn students were not accepted into Durmstrang period. The reason no one was calling Ren a dirty mudblood, stealing his things, tripping him the hallway was because by very nature of being accepted into Durmstrang he could not be a mudblood.

 

Somehow, some mysterious exception had been granted for him, perhaps because he came from a foreign country. Except… No, he expected it was more than that even.

 

More, while there were a few female students, there weren’t many. Lee stuck out like a sore thumb among them, this slender curved thing among her stocky male counterparts. So, he wondered if some exception had been granted to her as well as the one that had been made for him.

 

More, different from Hogwarts, although Lee and Ren stuck out with their foreign language and mannerisms there was an almost shinobi air to the students here. A serious and military like nature that had been entirely absent in Hogwarts. These wizards, Ren thought, he couldn’t outright dismiss as being civilians.

 

Lee, for her own part, seemed to be slaughtering the fifth-year curriculum without even trying, likely leaving sobbing children in her wake as she easily and without any prior experience slid to the top of the class.

 

As she well should, Ren couldn’t help but think, it’d be a sad day when Lee wasn’t somehow top of her class.

Kakashi’s letters revealed that nothing had changed at Hogwarts and without Ren there he was bored out of his goddamn mind. He’d made it his personal goal in life to sabotage every single quidditch game ever played on the grounds and had earned both the ire and suspicion of some Gryffindor girl in their class named McGonagall who was ‘catching wise to him’.

 

And it was a sad statement that Ren almost wished Hatake Kakashi was here at Durmstrang, if only for the entertainment.

 

Things were good, surprisingly good, not quite Konohagakure but not a place he was dying to get out of either. It was strange how much difference a curriculum and a school could make.

 

Grindelwald, in their first tutoring session, made his attempt to explain this, “I believe, Ren, that you may have quite an affinity for the dark arts.”

 

“What do you mean?” they were in a small private classroom used for small tutoring sessions like this, one which had a window overlooking one of the lakes on the side of the castle.

 

“I mean that not everyone has a talent for the dark arts, or the stomach, and that you have a gift the likes of which I haven’t seen in some time,” Grindelwald said with a fond smile, “You’ll do great things one day, Ren of _Konohagakure_.”

 

Great things, and said so easily too, but it was more than the words. There was a wordless understanding and appreciation inside of them. An appreciation for Ren and his potential which Dumbledore Albus had so carelessly overlooked. Even in that first session, Ren couldn’t help but take back his earlier opinion, and think that of all the wizards he had ever met Grindelwald Gellert was by far the most reasonable.

 

Still, better than Durmstrang and its magic, better than the dark arts, better than their ally in Grindelwald Gellert, was him and Lee. The first real chance to spend more time alone with her than he ever had before, without Namikaze Minato, Hatake Sakumo, or even Hatake Kakashi coming between them.

 

So even if they still played quidditch in wizarding Norway, Lee and him watching from the stands and rooting for the appropriate team, it wasn’t so bad.

 

* * *

 

Dearest Sister and Vaguely Tolerable Bastard Ren,

 

Hogwarts remains… not so much filled with hogs as it is filled with civilians who sometimes resemble hogs. The holidays were not kind to many of my peer’s waistlines and I’m told that the first few quidditch games look bleak because of this.

 

Regardless, the semester continues. I stay at the top of my class, naturally. My admirers continue to note my silver hair and adorable and foreign disposition.

 

I have been invited to something called a Slug Club, run by one Slughorn Horace, I am told that it is a ‘can’t miss opportunity’ and that one of the highlights that I unfortunately cannot partake in is that he serves champagne to sixth years and up.

 

Apparently, I am very young for an invitation so I should feel ten times as honored as my thirteen-year-old peers.

 

Meanwhile, I have taken it upon myself to improve or else eliminate the game of quidditch from Hogwarts. Stealing the snitch is not nearly enough, no, they’ve caught on to that and some girl from Gryffindor named McGonagall Minerva says that she is watching me like a hawk. If she weren’t eleven and had any kind of training I might be intimidated. As it is, I now endeavor to try twice as hard to corrupt the game by instead wreaking havoc with all the equipment from the brooms to whatever the hell those other balls that aren’t the snitch are called.

 

We shall see results shortly.

 

All My Best,

 

Hatake Kakashi: Unofficial Hufflepuff Mascot

 

P.S.

 

By the by, how is Durmstrang treating you? According to my Hufflepuff peers, the puffiest quivering with fear at the mere mention, it is filled with dark sorcerers who eat babies.

 

Naturally I told them that babies don’t have enough chakra to be worth it, every Jashinist worth his salt knows to go for the full-grown adult shinobi with the full-grown chakra pathways.

 

So, that said, how do babies taste? Let me know, that answer may be on a quiz at some point.

 

 P. P. S

 

Did you know that you can earn a detention for spreading rumors of cannibalism? Well, apparently you can. A fun fact, brought to you by writing lines for Professor Dumbledore Albus, my biggest fan.

 

* * *

 

“You’re lying,” it was a blunt casual thing, said by one of Ren’s classmates, so careless that no thought was even put into it.

“I’m sorry?” Ren asked but the boy, Olav, did not relent.

 

“There’s no way Gellert Grindelwald is tutoring you,” the boy continued in his thick accent but with the confidence one might have for saying the sky is blue.

 

At seeing Ren’s blank look Olav sighed, sneered, and said, “Lord Grindelwald is far too important to be teaching little foreign students Norwegian and dark arts, yes?”

 

The language charm, Ren thought with a frown, did that sometimes. It got the right idea but a foreign parsing to it, so that it sounded like stilted English. He couldn’t wait until he could speak Norwegian himself, none the less he countered, “Why, what does he do?”

 

“It’s not what he does it’s who he is,” a different boy, Siegfried, answered across from Ren, “He is Lord Grindelwald, he is concerned with the highest level of government, he sits on the board of directors. He is certainly not tutoring you.”

 

“Not that he needs it anyways,” Olav said with a laugh, “You come from Hogwarts and you still get the best grades in the dark arts. It’s not fair I tell you!”

 

Ren laughed with them but his eyes remained tight and his smile slightly flat because both he and Lee very much were being tutored by Grindelwald Gellert. And yet this very idea seemed to be impossible.

 

The next time he saw him for their tutoring session Ren asked him as much.

 

“Oh, don’t pay them much mine, my name gets around far too much these days,” Grindelwald said with a dismissive brush of his hand, “The way you hear people talk you’d think I’m having lunch with the British Minister of Magic in one moment and lunch with the German magical Kaiser in the next.”

 

Ren nodded slowly, not sure if he accepted it but willing to brush it aside, after all, rumors did have a tendency to spread…

 

“Now, let’s see that spell again,” Grindelwald said, watching as Ren performed the motions and carefully enunciated the words of the dark incantation, watching as dark elegant light swirled from the tip of his wand with Grindelwald’s approval.

 

“What about you, Ren, do you mind if I ask about your mysterious childhood?”

 

Ren shook his head, “No, though there’s not much to tell.”

 

“Oh, I doubt that, we all have stories to tell,” Grindelwald said with that affectionate smile that he now gave Ren so very often, “Is it true you grew up in an orphanage?”

 

“Yes,” Ren said rather bleakly, “For eight years… I would have stayed there until I was eleven and Dumbledore delivered my letter.”

 

This last was a new and sudden realization, one he’d never really thought of before, that there was this set date that the wizarding world would finally reach out to him. And then… And then would they have let him stay at the school over the summer or would he have had to go back and forth to the orphanage for seven years?  


Seventeen years of Wool’s Orphanage… What a hell that would have been.

 

He blinked then, eyes darting back to Grindelwald, “You said you were once friend with Dumbledore.”

 

“Yes, I was, we were much younger then…” Grindelwald drifted off, eyes distant and clouded by memory, “I sometimes think he was the best friend I ever had. He was the realist to my dreamer, not too much of a realist of course, but enough to keep me grounded. And he was so brilliant, an academic certainly, but he had this intuitive genius about him that even caught the eye of Nicholas Flamel.”

 

He paused, looked at his hands, at the wand gripped loosely in them, “We had an argument, his little sister Ariana died in an accident, and I’m afraid that was the end of our friendship. We have not spoken since.”

 

The words hung in the air, their vagueness leaving so many possibilities about what this argument, what this accident, could have possibly been.

 

Then the moment was gone, Grindelwald clapped his hands together, “Enough about my doomed friendships, what of yours Ren? You said it was Lee Eru who found you in the orphanage and took you to _Konohagakure_?”

 

Ren hesitated, stiffened, and for a moment considered Grindelwald and his curiosity. Finally, he nodded, “That’s right, it was Lee.”

 

In his mind’s eye he could see her even now, red-headed, bleeding, eyes burning with a knife to his throat as she pinned him to the wall, “She was bleeding everywhere, she’d been hurt on a mission and had just ended up in my room by accident, but she didn’t act like she was hurt at all. Anyone else would have been dead, but never Lee…”

 

No, Lee always picked herself up, no matter how improbable or even impossible. Reality and all its rules always seemed to bend to her, and Ren couldn’t see anything wrong with that, as he himself was the same. Always turning towards Eru Lee.

 

He grinned, looking Grindelwald in the eye, almost missing the inscrutable expression on his face as he listened, “She’s the best, you know. A _jonin_ at the age of fourteen, younger if she’d been in any other village. People were saying she was an S-ranked _shinobi_ at the age of six! Even at fifteen she’s one of the best _ninjas_ _Konoha_ has ever seen, up there with the _nidaime_ and the _shodaime_ and any _kage_ worth his salt.”

 

For a moment there wasn’t any expression on Grindelwald Gellert’s face, then there was a knowing smile, “Sounds like you’re very fond of her, Ren.”

 

Ren flushed, realizing that even in front of a foreign nin he had somehow managed to be obvious. He turned away, cheeks burning, willing himself to regain his stoicism before he embarrassed himself further.

 

“Well, I for one, wish you the best of luck in getting the girl.”

 

With that they moved back to the spell in question before quickly moving onto the next one, far ahead of Durmstrang’s curriculum, but Grindelwald himself not seeming to care. No, not that, he encouraged it and Ren’s own pursuit of the dark arts, which were quickly becoming his favorite and best topic.

 

In this, he was certain, filled with a heady and almost euphoric confidence as he left Grindelwald’s tutoring classroom, was how he could surpass Namikaze Minato entirely, perhaps even reach the level of Senju Tobirama himself, who had once created a jutsu to resurrect the souls of the dead.

 

And with surprise and a strange, tender happiness, Ren thought that in many ways Grindelwald was becoming a mentor akin to Senju Tobirama himself. Not too close, because he was still a foreign nin, but all the same, certainly closer than Ren had ever expected.

 

* * *

 

Dearest Sister and Ren,

 

I’d have more to say in this note but unfortunately not much happens in this place. I have been stuck in the second half of this first-year curriculum and it seems that a power of god would not even be enough to save me now.

 

After interrogating the Divinations professor, I found that I am, “Doomed, doomed, doomed!” Emphasis on the doom, mind you. Although, oddly enough, he also says I have a very good shot at being the sixth hokage. So… Heads up for that I suppose.

 

Meanwhile McGonagall Minerva and I have entered deep negotiations, if I leave quidditch alone, she will help me in my quest to curb stomp our uppity Slytherin peers into humiliation and submission. I think it’s cute that she thinks I can’t do both without her help and am remotely intimidated by her intimidations.

 

None the less, I am intrigued, also there are just too many damn quidditch games and I’m tired of going to all of them. They all look the same to me. Though McGonagall Minerva, who has now taken it upon herself to educate me on the glory and art of quidditch, assures me that it is an intricate sport of strategy, stealth, valor, and sheer guts. Needless to say, McGonagall has never been to the chunin exams.

 

Otherwise still top of the class, can confirm that a Slug Club is just as awful as the title suggests, and I am slowly but surely dying in this pit filled with pigs that we call Hogwarts. Help.

 

From England with Love,

 

Hatake Kakashi

 

P.S. Did you know that, apparently, responding to insults about one’s nationality and heritage is not enough justification to respond with, “Your mother” and that to do so can land you straight into detention?

 

Neither did I.

 

* * *

 

Mornings were still bitterly cold as Spring rolled by but slowly but surely were warming themselves, at the very least, it was beginning to be light by the time he and Lee woke up each morning to train.

 

It was in the middle of stretching run morning after having run laps around the castles and over the lakes that Ren admitted, to his own surprise, “You know, I don’t think I mind the thought of coming back to Durmstrang next year.”

 

Hogwarts the idea had been horrifying to him, as it was undoubtedly horrifying to Kakashi (who appeared to be losing his mind over there in England in the most hilarious manner possible). He could… come back here, he thought, for one year or even two more years and be more than fine with it.

 

If the war would allow, of course, but all the same it was a thought he hadn’t thought he’d ever have.

 

Lee stared past him, out into the mountains still white with snow and quietly asked, “Is it because of Grindelwald?”

 

Ren opened his mouth, closed it, thought of it. It was true he liked Durmstrang more than Hogwarts, the classes more than Hogwarts, just about all aspects of it more than Hogwarts but if he was going to be honest then Grindelwald did play a large role in it. Every week he looked forward to their tutoring sessions and what dark jutsu they would discover and perform that day.

 

It was almost as if they were discovering secret worlds together, he and Grindelwald, diving through these ancient tomes and unlocking jutsus from them. And there was always a light of fascination and adventure in Grindelwald’s golden eyes, something akin to Ren’s own expression as together they peered into all the worlds they could reach from here.

 

Lee was staring at him, her expression blank, her eyes wide and green and giving nothing at all away.

 

“Not entirely,” Ren finally said rather lamely, it more than clear that his true answer was yes.

 

For a moment too long, Lee stared in silence, looking at Ren and into him, and finally she said, “That man is not our friend.”

 

“I know that…” Ren started with a huff, but Lee didn’t let him finish, spoke over him in that calm authoritative voice that was far too old for her fifteen-year-old body.

 

“He is nothing like the facade he presents, Ren, and whatever kinship you feel is a tool for his own end. Always remember, Ren, however friendly he might be, at the end of things he is a foreign shinobi with a foreigner’s agenda.”

 

“I know that!” Ren hissed, “That doesn’t mean I can’t like him or appreciate his advice.”

 

She was acting like he hadn’t passed his chunin exams, like he was still a stupid academy student who would take something like Grindelwald Gellert at face value. Of course, he knew the man wasn’t really on his side, of course he knew there was something in it for Grindelwald! He wasn’t a fool!

 

“Or that his goals don’t overlap ours,” Ren said, face burning as he stretched, looking forcefully away from Lee’s, “Everything we’ve seen, everything Tobirama-shishou or Kakashi has sent us just confirms everything he’s told us! For all we know his agenda could be ours and I don’t see why we have to get suspicious and start pulling out kunai just because he’s not a Konoha nin!”

 

He shouldn’t have to have their values, why would he? That didn’t mean he was necessarily an enemy either. If Senju Hashirama had thought that way, even of the Uchiha, who were his enemies, then Konoha would never have come into existence!

 

Lee was the last person he’d expect dogmatic jingoism from.

 

“Besides,” Ren spat out, “You’re one to talk, you’ve never been good with people and reading them. What gives you the right to say things about Grindelwald Gellert like you’ve ever had any insight into anyone’s head? Honestly, Lee, you should remember what you’re good at!”

 

And in that moment Ren knew he had gone entirely too far, he looked back at her, “Lee?”

 

Lee said nothing merely stood, stared down at Ren frowning slightly, eyes burning, and face completely unreadable. Then, without any word at all, she walked away, leaving Ren in the empty field beside the castle, helplessly watching her go.

 

* * *

 

Dearest Sister and Tolerable Ren,

 

In my spare time which is what I’ve decided to call all my classes where I’m so far ahead of the curriculum it’s not even funny anymore, I’ve written a musical. It’s called “The Scarecrow Cometh”, it stars me as the titular Scarecrow. And I think that it shall be my magnum opus.

 

It starts, you see, with a scarecrow who is minding his own business when one day he is abducted by plant zombie aliens. He then, with the help of a warrior alien rabbit princess, must defeat the plant zombie scourge through song (and dance) and save the galaxy as well as his loveable home planet.

 

He then returns home after many adventures, and a royal love affair, only to realize that no one ever even noticed he was gone or believes a word he says about why he was late to class.

 

All My Best,

 

Hatake Kakashi

 

P.S. While McGonagall called the piece “inspired by something” and “not quite up there with quidditch” the rest of Hogwarts was not nearly appreciative. Including one Dumbledore Albus, who did not appreciate my one-man, and clone, performance of the show, and has given me detention for a week.

 

Art is so underappreciated these days.

 

* * *

 

A Spring dance came a few weeks later, a strange affair where girls from a local nearby wizarding school were invited and alum came as well, one where the old ballroom was aired out and guests came flooding in with all the glitz and glamor they could muster.

 

Everything seemed to be back to normal with him and Lee. That very night after the fight she’d talked to him again, and it’d seemed like the whole thing was brushed over.

 

Except, sometimes, sometimes he felt the tension of that argument lingering in the air. Whenever Ren rushed off to meet Grindelwald, or Lee went and met him for her own sessions.

 

Still, tonight they were both in formal wear, the first time Ren had been in formal wear since that disastrous date when he was in the academy, only this time they were both dressed for the occasion. Lee was in a blue kimono, borrowed from Hatake, and she looked beautiful.

 

Lee smiled down at him fondly, “I look utterly ridiculous, don’t I?”  


“No, not at all,” Ren insisted but she laughed.

 

“Please, I have no idea how to tie this thing,” she said motioning to her obi before moving her hand to motion her chaotic pinned up hair, “And my hair is hardly done properly.”

 

“That doesn’t matter,” Ren said, meaning it entirely, because he’d always thought she was beautiful. She smiled back at him and Ren could swear his heart was fluttering as she looked at him, he grinned back, for once unconcerned with who might see him looking at her like a lovesick fool.

 

The music started, he held out his hand, “Can I interest you in a dance, Eru-san?”

 

With an amused sort of smile she placed her pale hand in his and allowed him to drag her out to the dance floor. She was still too tall for him, but he was growing, and this dance between them was not quite as awkward as it would have been only a few years ago.

 

As they twirled Ren noted the soft candlelight of the chandeliers, the mirrors of the ballroom, and how it gave everything a rosy hue and softer edge. This, he thought as he danced, was a night he never wanted to forget.

 

He’d paint this moment, this single moment of them together in this crowded room with the music of violins and the soft light of candles, in his mind for all eternity as a sharingan would have were he blessed with that dojutsu.

 

“I hadn’t realized you liked dancing so much,” Lee noted, either ignoring or not noticing Ren’s sudden flush at the words.

 

“It’s fun, if civilian,” Ren said and to his joy Lee smiled back, fondly and softly, “Yes, I suppose it is fun.”

 

“Mind if I cut in,” Ren looked up, over his shoulder to wear Grindelwald, in formal elegant robes was standing and smiling.

 

“Oh, Mr. Grindelwald,” Ren said, stopping mid-whirl, “I didn’t see you.”

 

“That’s quite alright,” he said with a smile before his eyes swept the room, “It’s quite the party, isn’t it? Mostly for the alums and upper crust, of course, there’s hardly enough gender diversity here for dances. All the same, I’m glad you two are enjoying yourselves.”

 

In his arms Lee stiffened slightly, hands tightening, but she made no other move than that.

 

“I’ve been working on that last spell you caught me,” Ren said eagerly, “That difficult one, I think I’ve got it and I’ll be sure to show you next week.”

 

“Excellent, I’m looking forward to it,” Grindelwald said, with genuine fondness before his eyes slid to Lee herself, who still seemed to be waiting for something, “Now, if you don’t mind, I think I’d like to steal your partner for a dance.”

“Oh,” Ren stepped back, allowing Grindelwald to smoothly step into Ren’s place, “Sure, that’s…”

 

They were already gone, whirling away from Ren and into the crowd, and as he watched the soft candlelight became somehow starker, painting dark shadows across the pair, lingering in Grindelwald’s hand on Lee’s waist and in the shadows of his cheekbones. Lee’s eyes, on the other hand, seemed to burn far brighter than any candles, and they never once left Grindelwald’s face.

 

At once there was nothing soft about the pair, instead there was something dark and dangerous, in the way Grindelwald Gellert’s eyes lingered on her. There was a dragon in his gaze, looking down upon his pile of gold, while in Lee there was a blood-soaked knight with a steel blade in hand.

 

Suddenly, Ren knew that everything Grindelwald Gellert had done, Ren’s admission to Durmstrang along with Lee’s, the contact he’d kept with Senju Tobirama throughout the term, Ren’s tutoring sessions as well as Lee’s, were all for Lee and her limitless potential.

 

At once, Ren’s world shattered.

 

* * *

 

Ren found him in the gardens, now beginning to bud and bloom with the onset of Spring. He stood there beside a fountain, staring up into the stars as if he hadn’t a care in the world, this strange golden man.

 

“You,” Ren started, the man not even turning towards him, as if Ren was not worthy of the attention, “Was any of it real?”

 

Finally, too slowly, Grindelwald turned, taking in Ren’s look of betrayal and rage and merely tilting his head, “I’m afraid I have no idea what you’re talking about, Ren.”

 

Ren laughed, stepped forward as he shook his head, his crazed grin on the verge of cracking, “I am not an idiot, Grindewald, you’re using me. You’re using me to get to Lee, aren’t you?!”

 

And it shouldn’t hurt, because he should have known this, should have suspected and accepted it from the start. Lee had reminded him as much, yet, somehow, he had forgotten. Forgotten that of course Grindelwald Gellert had his own side and own reasons for his interest in shinobi.

 

Ren stopped until he was only a few feet from him, staring up at those strange golden eyes, and asked, “What are you really after?”

 

For a moment, the man considered him without any expression at all, a cool and empty calculation, then he started, “Your friend Lee is very clever, I’m not sure how much you realize that. Her bluntness, brevity, and eccentricity often hides it, but she is oh so insightful when she chooses to be. She brought up this second muggle world war from the very start, as if she’d known, even then, that I had intentions within it.”

 

He motioned out towards the gardens, as if they represented his domain, his future kingdom, “War is coming, and it will be truly terrible. However, with war comes opportunity for change, to topple old kingdoms and build anew. This world is fractured, wizards hide like rats with desperation and memory charms while muggles slaughter one another. I will build a world without the statute of secrecy, reshape all of Europe into my own image and create a great magical empire such that has not been seen since the fall of Rome.”

 

He then looked back at Ren, looking into him with those burning too bright eyes, darting forward and clasping Ren by his shoulders, Ren too stunned to do anything but stare, “Not just my image either, but your image, Lee Eru’s image, the image of all those powerful wizard children who fell through the cracks. I will make a world where your history is inconceivable, where you never would have had to wait inside that orphanage, or Lee in her Uncle’s cupboard!”

 

He paused then, let go of Ren’s shoulders and stepped away, his voice softer and imploring, “You, you and Lee, have the opportunity to help me in this in a way so few do. You can help me remake this world of ours.”

 

A world without Wool’s, what could that even look like? For so long he had been haunted by its gray walls, dreaming only of leaving and setting a match to the place…

 

Then, however, his own bitterness returned to ground him as he looked at this too charming, too golden man, “Are you sure it’s not just Lee you want?”

 

Grindelwald smiled, a cruel jagged thing, “Ah, you’re rather insightful yourself, Ren.”

 

Ren stiffened, fingers twitching towards his waist and the kunai stored there even now, however Grindelwald did not flinch or even stammer as he continued speaking.

 

“I confess, I’ve never seen anything or anyone like Lee Eru before. Her power is… it is almost physical it is so present, she almost burns with it. It is no small wonder that you and your rival Minato Namikaze want her for yourselves,” his smile grew, wider and more jagged as if he had reached the punchline of a joke, “However, she’s a bit young for me.”

 

Ren laughed, his own voice hoarse, summoning a kunai into his hand, “You’re a liar, you’re just using me, using _shishou_ , all of it just to get to her. I know it.”

 

“ _Konoha_ ,” Ren hissed towards Grindelwald, “Is nothing but a tool of war to you!”

 

“Is that not what you are, Ren, a mercenary state?” Grindelwald asked calmly, “Forgive me, but I was under the impression that that, at its heart, was what a hidden village was.”

 

Ren hesitated for a moment, because there was truth to those words, cheap as they were they weren’t entirely wrong. This was what Konoha did, even now it was embroiled in its own war and Ren would be expected to fight when he returned home.

 

Meanwhile, Grindelwald stepped forward, wand in hand even as he soothed, “You will see, Ren, that this is for the best. For _Konohagakure_ , for you, and for Lee Eru.”

 

With that thought, with Lee and her frown, her burning eyes, Ren gave out a harsh cry and threw the kunai, already reaching into himself for genjutsu and ninjutsu and sliding the English wand into one hand.

 

Getting in close he was able to quickly knock Grindelwald off balance, sending him in a dazed stumbled backwards into a bench and ducking out of the way as the man righted himself and began firing out spells. However, soon it became a game of dodging and weaving, somehow avoiding spells before they hit and it was clear the battle was over before it had begun.

 

Without further ado, Grindelwald began to monologue and taunt, the sign that he was more than confident he’d won, “You have talent, more, you have potential, but potential is not ability.”

 

A particularly vicious streak of binding purple light flew past Ren, forcing him to duck onto the grass and summon a wall of earth to block it.

 

“You’re young, Ren, while young and trained you are not in the league of your friend Lee yet and are hardly a threat to me.”

 

Ren threw several more Kunai, summoning mist then disappearing into it, waiting for the moment to strike then ducking away into the shadows as Grindelwald with a swish of his wand banished the mist.

 

“You aren’t even the age I was when I was expelled from Durmstrang.”

 

Bright light flooded the gardens, Ren trying not to blink against it as he darted out of the way, too slowly as his leg was caught under Grindelwald’s spell, pinning him to the earth, the grass binding itself like rope around his feet.

 

Soon Grindelwald’s dark oxford shoes were in front of Ren, indifferent to his cries of rage and horror.

 

“You’re being something of a pest,” Grindelwald Gellert calmly noted, “It’s far too early for this sort of confrontation, and besides, for all your supposed betrayal I always did have a fondness for you.”

 

Ren felt the tip of the man’s wand, wooden and burning, at his temple.

 

“Please, don’t,” Ren pleaded desperately, not knowing what spell, perhaps one of those horrible jutsus they had learned together, would come out of it.

 

“I’ll see you on the other side, my young friend,” Grindelwald said, a jovial smile in his voice, then, “ _Obliviate._ ”

 

* * *

 

“Ren,” a voice, familiar, a voice he would know anywhere, “Ren!”

 

Ren blinked into awareness, he was lying down in the gardens, Lee crouched over him, still in her formal wear. No, not crouched, she was clutching him, shaking him with pale fingers wrapped around his arms, her eyes wide and filled with fear.

But what did Lee have to fear?

 

“Ren, thank god, what happened?”

 

Ren paused, looked about, felt a dull sort of curiosity, “I don’t know.”

 

“You don’t know?” Lee asked, “I lost track of you in the dance hall, one minute you were there and then you hadn’t been back for half an hour.”

 

“I… Must have stepped out for a bit,” he said, yes, that sounded right. He’d stepped out into the gardens, for fresh air, or to look for something. He must have stopped here to look at the stars then lost track of time.

 

Lee said nothing, her expression grim as she looked at him, none the less she hugged him close for a moment. Ren hugged her back, closing his eyes and breathing out a sigh, as if he’d somehow been looking for Lee this whole time in the gardens.

 

Though what a strange place to look for her. If he’d been looking for Lee, he thought, he should have stayed in the dance hall.

 

“Let’s go inside, Ren.”

 

* * *

 

“What do you mean we’re not going back?!” Ren asked, the term was over, and with it as Lee and Ren sailed back to the magical mainland with the other students, she’d casually informed him that she was pulling rank.

 

“I mean that we’re done, we’re pulling out, half a year is enough and it’s far too dangerous to linger any more than we have. We’ve already lingered long enough,” Lee said as she turned her head to watch the waves roll past, this apparently being enough justification to just cut things off here.

“Oh, what, and _Hogwarts_ is safer?” Ren balked, because he didn’t hear anything about pulling Hatake Kakashi out.

 

“Yes,” Lee said rather shortly, crossing her arms and looking directly at him as if to see if he dared disagree.

 

“What about all the dark jutsus and _alchemy_ and all those things not covered in Hogwarts?” Ren asked.

 

“You’ll live,” Lee replied without a single shred of sympathy. Bitterly, he almost wondered if she was trying to keep him from surpassing Minato in his own way, from accelerating into his dark arts research with Grindelwald’s help.

 

That might as well be the reason since she wasn’t giving him another one to work with.

 

“You’re only saying all of this because you don’t trust Grindelwald to an absurd degree, even for a shinobi,” Ren countered, “The man’s far more of an ally than Dumbledore or any of the _English_.”

 

“He plays nice when it suits him,” Lee agreed rather cryptically, apparently unmoved by Ren’s accusations of her own paranoia.

 

Honestly, it was like trying to argue with a stone wall. Unfortunately, as the only jonin on site, Tobirama-shishou would unquestionably take her side and there’d be no more Durmstrang for any of them.

 

She could at least give some justification for her decision, he couldn’t help but think.

 

At least if Namikaze Minato was here, he couldn’t help but think, he’d be reasonable about all of this.

 

“Don’t worry,” Lee added, a strangely bitter note to her voice as Ren met her eyes, burning bright in the half light of the ship, “I’m more than certain we’ll see Grindelwald Gellert again.”


	5. Chapter 5

Summer of 1939 was spent, once again, mostly in England. After having set sail for Oslo along with the other students, then taking a portkey back to London, they hadn’t once looked back eastward towards Scandinavia or Grindelwald Gellert.

 

Instead there were a couple of long weeks of debriefing back in Konoha, Tobirama-shishou and Lee meeting with the hokage and the jonin-commander to discuss whether Konoha still had the resources to spare for another term of Hogwarts, and then going back to England to do absolutely nothing.

 

Ren could have been continuing his education in dark jutsus, in alchemy, in all the things he’d learned at Durmstang that hadn’t been available to Kakashi but books on dark jutsus were illegal in England and thus could only be found in English clan grimoires and alchemy was near impossible without the guidance of a master.

 

A master that he had had, could have had again in September, if only Lee would see some sort of reason.

 

June turned to July, the air became muggy yet still so much colder than Konoha, he would idly look over the advanced books on any and every topic available in England but wishing he was reading or doing something else. His skin almost itched, he felt restless, restless and bitter and disappointed in something he couldn’t even really name.

 

Just like he’d thought Tobirama-shishou hadn’t even blinked, hadn’t even questioned her, and just like that Ren was enrolled back in Hogwarts in the Fall to suffer quidditch and English peers with Hatake Kakashi.

 

And Tobirama-shishou knew that Lee was often unreasonable, he complained about it all the time, but she’d just gone up to him, said they were done, and he’d trusted her entirely! Not that, of course, Ren didn’t understand that. For all that Lee was Lee there was something about her that…

 

If it had been about anyone else, anything else, Ren might have also just gone along with it. Just like Tobirama-shishou and Kakashi were doing with none of them stopping to think that maybe Lee was being too paranoid for her own good.

 

Maybe, just maybe, there was no risk without reward and it was fine if Grindelwald had his own agenda.

 

Eventually, his restless pacing, bitter moods, constant sighing, and petulant ignoring of Lee had her throwing him out of the townhouse along with Hatake to go and make themselves useful and do something about that goddamn snake in Hogwarts’ basement.

 

So, it was with about halfway through the summer that he and Kakashi were once again back in the underbelly of Hogwarts, only this time, in chunin garb, with a great English fuinjutsu expanded trunk strapped to Ren’s back, and without the threat of arrogant upstart English civilians trying to beat the shit out of them in hallways.

 

“My question though,” Kakashi said as he surveyed the uneven stone walls, barely visible in the light from Ren’s wand, covered in layers and layers of green and black slime, “Is why the girl’s lavatory?”

 

Ren said nothing, not in the mood to put up with Hatake Kakashi’s trademark bullshit. Kakashi, however, didn’t seem to mind and kept blathering on as his eyes drifted over their surroundings from the discarded bones of rats, the jagged molding walls, the running water, and the translucent shed skin of the basilisk.

 

“I mean, of course the idea that someone built this elaborate temple beneath a fortress is also quite odd, but why the girl’s lavatory?” Kakashi emphasized, carefully hopping over a thick layer of skin as he spoke, “Honestly, how was anyone supposed to even find this place?”

 

“I don’t know, Hatake,” Ren said shortly, “Perhaps it wasn’t always a lavatory.”

 

From what he had read before leaving Hogwarts, Slytherin Salazar was rumored to have built the place and stored a monster inside, the basilisk, in his bitterness and despair after having become a nuke nin. This was five-hundred years ago, England’s population over the centuries had boomed exponentially. Ren imagined quite easily that whatever room had been housing the entrance to the chamber, left behind for Slytherin’s progeny, had been converted into the girl’s dungeon bathroom.

 

However, that was all just idle theories and ultimately, he couldn’t truly bring himself to care.

 

He should, years ago this would have meant the world to him. It meant that Ren was part of an ancient clan, the Slytherin clan, and that his blood limit truly was a blood limit going back centuries. However, lineage alone did not a clan make in Konoha. More, the more recent bitterness of having to return to Hogwarts stung far too much for him to pay attention to his ancestors.

 

“Sage, you are in a mood,” Kakashi muttered, a bit out of character for his normal pretense of obliviousness and earned a withering glare and spike of killing intent from Ren.

 

“Even compared to your normal moods,” Kakashi continued on, giving Ren a rather speculative glance, “You’re giving the Uchiha a run for their money.”

 

“I am not giving the Uchiha a run for their money,” Ren hissed out, not quite slipping into the noble tongue of snakes, but getting close to it. This, of course, only had Kakashi raising his silver eyebrows higher.

 

“Oh, you most certainly are,” Kakashi said, “Honestly, I survived a year of _Hogwarts_ , half of it on my own mind you after you abandoned me for _Norway_. You have no room to complain to me.”

 

“That’s not the issue,” Ren said before sighing, and deciding that if someone was going to be his confessor on this mission then god knew it probably had to be Hatake Kakashi, however much that killed him, “It’s just… We just left, just like that, just because Lee decided she didn’t like it anymore without any real reason why and Tobirama-shishou just listens because she’s a jonin!”

 

Ren’s chunin vest, suddenly, felt far too constricted against his chest. A physical reminder that he was only half-way there, still as far behind as ever, forever outranked.

 

And Grindelwald had yet to write over the summer, at least, not directly to Ren. Which made it seem that it was not simply leaving Durmstang but perhaps the last time Ren would ever see or speak to him again. Just like that, just because Lee had a bad feeling.

 

Kakashi said nothing for a few moments, waited and watched as Ren hissed towards the vault door that would open to reveal the great inner altar. The door opened, the eerie scene of eternally lit torches burning above stagnant water, the giant statues of stone serpents hissing in warning, that thin inner walkway, and the great carved face at the end of the hall engraving itself once again in his memory.

 

Finally, Kakashi said, “You know, nee-san is not…” he paused, thought over his words, then said, “She does not do things without reason.”

 

Ren scoffed as he stepped inside and vaulted down onto the surface of the walkway, Kakashi leaping behind him and landing without noise on the stone.

 

“It may not be a reason that’s always immediately obvious, but there is always a reason,” Kakashi said, “If she’s pulling out, this quickly…”

 

“Then what?” Ren asked as they walked closer and closer towards the carved mouth of the great face at the end of the walkway.

 

“Then there is a very good reason to do so,” Kakashi finally finished, “I would not take it lightly.”

 

“How would you know? You weren’t there,” Ren said but Kakashi only gave him a pointed look, one that caused Ren to flush ever so slightly, as implied beneath it was that Ren was acting like he hadn’t been there either.

 

That as a jonin, one who had been in the field years more than Ren, there were things that Lee would see that he simply could not.

 

“ _Hogwarts_ isn’t so bad,” Kakashi finally said lamely as he turned his back to the statue, waiting as Ren hissed for it to open and the basilisk to respond, “It’s like being boiled alive slowly, the water heats up bit by bit, you get used to it after a while and it just doesn’t seem so bad anymore.”

 

“That was a pitiful analogy that helps nothing,” Ren commented even as the basilisk hissed in greeting, rumbling up from further into the chamber as Ren slung the trunk off his back and opened it, expanding it with a few English jutsus to be wide enough to fit the snake.

 

“It’s as positive I can get after god only knows how many games of _quidditch_ ,” Kakashi said with a hapless shrug, tensing as the snake entered the chamber with eyes on Kakashi’s back, salivating at the thought of devouring the other chunin, “Oh lord, how I despise _quidditch_.”

 

After a pause, stepping forward ever so slightly and away from the basilisk, he added, “And giant snakes, I don’t think I’m a fan of those either.”

 

Ren just smiled, a dark amused thing, and whispered to the great king of snakes before him, instructing him to enter the trunk in preparation of returning to a great forest far from this one and a feast in its honor.

 

Slowly, surely, the basilisk entered into the trunk, disappearing entirely inside and no doubt investingating the ridiculous transfiguration work that Tobirama-shishou had performed to create a suitable environment before locking it tight and strapping it to his back once again.

 

“Why do I feel, every time we meet, that snake gets that much closer to eating me?” Kakashi asked, sparing Ren’s trunk a rather dubious look.

 

“Because it does,” Ren responded, certainly, every time it had seen Kakashi thus far it had asked if he was a tasty snack that Ren had brought to sacrifice to the snake. It made Ren think that perhaps he should start bringing it tasty snacks, ideally in the form of people like Moaning Myrtle Warren.

 

Kakashi just gave a slightly discontent hum before walking with Ren out of the chamber and up towards the hidden staircase that would lead them back into the girl’s dungeon lavatory.

 

“So,” Ren said, shifting the straps as he walked, “What exactly did I miss at Hogwarts?”

 

“Nothing,” Kakashi said with a sigh that was almost pitiful, “ _Quidditch_ , classes we already should have tested out of months ago, your Slytherin friends trying and failing to avenge their honor…”

 

“And you think I should be glad to come back to this?” Ren couldn’t help but ask.

 

“Well, no, but it’s hardly worth copious amounts of killing intent either,” Kakashi said, “Especially when _Durmstang_ doesn’t sound that much better.”

 

“Oh, ye of little faith,” Ren blocked as they took the stairs two at a time, the staircase one of the few in the castle that had the decency to stay stationary, “It was far better than this cesspool.”

 

Kakashi, entirely unconvinced, asked, “Was there _quidditch_?”

 

Well, there had been quidditch, not that Ren had gone to that many of the games but…

 

“Were there _wizards_?”

 

There had been those too, and granted they weren’t great, were better than Hogwarts mostly because they couldn’t believe Ren was a mudblood at all based on his admission. That and he hadn’t bothered to get close to any of them, was at best vague acquaintances, so hadn’t spent enough time around them to get that same sheer irritation that the English wizards had bestowed on him.

 

“Were you bored stiff in most of the classes?”

 

Well, the classes, yes, but he hadn’t…

 

“It’s _Hogwarts_ Two: Electric Boogaloo,” Kakashi concluded for him, like they were that comparable and it was that easy, “The only things you liked about it were nee-san and Grindelwald.”

 

That… was not incorrect. Sometimes he forgot that Hatake really wasn’t an idiot, was, in fact, eerily intelligent and oddly perceptive when it suited him. Even at the time Ren had thought that, that it had been Grindelwald, Grindelwald and the time spent with Lee, that had added color to Durmstang’s landscape.

 

Still, that did not make him eager to return to Hogwarts in the Fall.

 

Then again, he thought bleakly as they stepped out into the dungeon bathroom, perhaps they wouldn’t. Any day now Tobirama-shishou or Lee could be called back to the front and Kakashi and Ren with them. And England, Hogwarts, Durmstang, they would be like a dream dreamt by no one.

 

“Is it just me,” Kakashi asked as the door to the chamber closed itself behind them, “Or just by standing inside here do you feel suddenly like Jiraiya-sama?”

 

Kakashi looked around, motioning to the empty stalls almost in reverence, as if they were halfway to becoming Jiraiya-sama the pervert sage, just by being inside of a women’s restroom.

 

“It’s just you,” Ren responded blithely with a roll of his eyes, stepping forward to start getting out of this place and out of the Hogwarts wards when he stopped in his tracks, Kakashi with him.

 

“ _Oh_ ,” Kakashi said rather lamely with a bright and cheerful grin, “ _Hello, Professor, fancy meeting you here._ ”

 

There, standing there dumbly and looking at them with rather wide eyes and a completely flabbergasted look, was Dumbledore Albus dressed once again in a hideous rainbow that had the indecency to call itself clothing.

 

Dumbledore blinked, blinked again, his auburn eyebrows raising as he tried to come to terms that his two least favorite, if best, students were loitering inside of the school during the summer after hours, with a giant trunk, dressed in combat gear.

 

“ _Now_ ,” Hatake continued as if everything was fine and nothing strange was going on at all, “ _What is a fine gentleman like you doing in a place like this?_ ”

 

Dumbledore’s expression dropped, his eyebrows raised higher, and finally he asked, “ _I believe, Mr. Hatake, that that is my line._ ”

 

A truly awkward and stifling silence descended upon the hallway. At once Ren couldn’t help but notice how glaringly empty it was, how oddly juxtaposed both he, Hatake, and Dumbledore were from one another with their different ages, different professions, and vastly different fashion choices.

 

They all looked at each other, waiting for someone, anyone to break down and start talking. Either Ren or Kakashi with some lame excuse of why they had snuck into Hogwarts over the summer, specifically into a girl’s lavatory or even what was in the trunk or else Dumbledore with some explanation of why he’d been unfortunate enough to stumble across them at all.

 

“ _Right_ ,” Ren said slowly, grimacing and willing himself to power through the tension, “ _Well, if that’s all, then Kakashi and I best be going…_ ”

 

Dumbledore seemed to come to his senses then, his eyes brightened, and he stepped forward, chakra rising inside of him as he asked, “ _Wait, I would like to talk with the pair of you._ ”

 

Kakashi grimaced, glanced at Ren, then noted, “ _Well, Professor, we’d love to but we’re out of school right now so even if you’re dying to give me yet another detention I’m afraid I…_ ”

 

Dumbledore laughed, though it was a short, shallow, pained thing, and he shook his head, “ _No, no, this isn’t about school, school or detentions… Just, come to my office, we can discuss more there._ ”

 

Not school, not detentions, Ren thought idly. That sounded like Dumbledore wanted to speak with shinobi, then, or Kakashi and himself in the capacity of being shinobi except… Except why would someone like Dumbledore Albus ever want to do that?

 

The walk to his office was somehow even tenser and more uncomfortable than standing outside the restroom had been. Their footsteps echoed on the deserted moving stair cases, they moved at a painfully slow civilian pace, and by the tenseness in Dumbledore’s shoulders it was more than clear that he was not comfortable having two shinobi walking behind him.

 

However, there was also resignation inside him, a dull sinking of chakra, as if he felt that somehow, in some impossible manner, he had no other choice. As if, perhaps, it had always been coming to this, two shinobi standing in his shadow.

 

His office, just as it had been during the school year, was a cluttered and ridiculous mess of strange silver instruments, what looked like a lava lamp, and twittering clockwork chicks all circling about a greater clockwork hen. Next to this was an overflowing jar of small yellow balls of candy, on reaching his desk Dumbledore motioned to it, “ _Lemon drops?_ ”

 

“ _No thank you,_ ” Ren noted before, rather drily, adding, “ _It’s considered rude in our country to so blatantly offer someone food or beverages in such awkward and tense circumstances. It’s considered an insultingly blatant attempt at poisoning._ ”

 

Dumbledore’s smile strained at the corners, his face paled, and he looked towards Ren as if to ask if he was truly serious. Ren just smiled back, let Dumbledore get to the point, he thought, and let him not even try to pretend that he didn’t know exactly what he and Hatake Kakashi were.

 

Kakashi, with a sigh, took the seat across from Dumbledore’s desk, “ _I believe what my esteemed colleague Ren is trying to say, Professor, is that we’re all professionals here, on our own tight time schedules, and that perhaps it would be best if we came straight to the point._ ”

 

“ _The point,_ ” Dumbledore said with a somewhat bitter laugh as he sunk into his plus seat behind his desk, “ _Ah, yes, the point…_ ”

 

He trailed off, looked away from the pair of them, of Ren lowering the trunk to the floor and taking a seat next to Kakashi, and instead towards the window and the Hogwarts grounds painted in twilight below.

 

“ _Mr. Hatake, here, informed me during last schoolyear that you, Mr. Riddle, and your older friend Miss Eru attended Durmstang for the Spring semester,_ ” Dumbledore said, but there wasn’t a hint of doubt in it, this all simply prelude to whatever it was he truly wanted to say. He paused, looked both of them in the eye, and then said, “ _Though Mr. Hatake did not say, and though I did not ask, I suspect that a Gellert Grindelwald sponsored you. Am I correct?_ ”

 

Ren stiffened ever so slightly, suddenly remembering Grindelwald’s odd smattering of comments concerning a shared past with Dumbledore Albus many years ago, and an irrevocable estrangement between the pair of them.

 

It was Kakashi who answered, “ _Yes, that would be correct._ ”

 

Dumbledore closed his eyes, brought his hands up to his forehead, and let out a long, deep, and weary sigh.

 

“ _I know it seems an odd and personal thing to ask, but I have… History, with Gellert._ ”

 

“ _Yes,_ ” Ren cut in, “ _He said as much._ ”

 

Dumbledore looked up, eyes flashing, searching Ren’s face as if by it alone he could see exactly what details Grindelwald had given to Ren. However, eventually, this look faded and that resigned look returned once again.

 

“ _We were very good friends once, over the course of a summer when he briefly lived in England following his expulsion from Durmstang, but… In the end, I think I simply could not truly stomach him._ ”

 

Stomach him, Ren thought blinking, what an odd thing to say. Not that he couldn’t handle the man, but that he couldn’t stomach him. As if there was something so vile and wrong with Grindelwald Gellert that it required suppressing one’s gag reflex indefinitely.

 

It was not the description Ren would use for the suave and sophisticated man that Ren had come to know in the past half-year.

 

“ _I suppose I should get to the point,_ ” Dumbledore said, lacing his fingers together and jarring Ren from his own thoughts, “ _I would like to make use of your services as_ shinobi _of_ Konohagakure _, whatever that might entail._ ”

 

Kakashi’s mouth opened, closed, opened again, and he leaned forward and asked, “ _Professor, are you… I know I’ve mentioned what it is we do, what I do, have done, and am capable of doing, and how much money that sort of thing costs…_ ”

 

The man continued, lips twitching upwards in amusement, “ _Money I have, and if not I can certainly borrow, one can say it pays to have been the apprentice of Nicholas Flamel. Money is not an issue, Mr. Hatake. Nor is… Nor is my distaste for what you have found yourself caught up in. Though, preferably, I would like to hire your older comrades, Tobirama Senju and Lee Eru._ ”

 

“ _Hire for what?_ ” Ren cut in sharply, wondering what a man like this could possibly want with ninja. It must be something truly desperate or heinous, that he would forsake his own moral superiority to get it done.

 

Dumbledore reached into his desk and pulled out a worn and faded book, the title, “ _Tales of Beedle the Bard_ ” written across on the cover. There he flipped it open to where a bookmark rested, to the beginning of a chapter titled, “ _The Tale of the Three Brothers_ ”

 

As Ren and Kakashi leaned over to get a better look of the text as well as the illustration of three men, three brothers presumably, a raging river, a bridge, and a hooded skeletal figure in twilight, the professor spoke, “ _I would like for you to gather intelligence on Gellert, specifically if he is preparing for war, both to stoke the muggles into another war to end all wars and our own people as well. Any details you can find on this, where he’s going, who he’s meeting, what he’s planning… It would be of immense help._ ”

 

Preparing for war, he said it with such certainty Ren couldn’t help but think. As if he knew Grindelwald was preparing for war, he just wasn’t sure what form it would take and didn’t know when it would strike. Which… Lee had said war would come in the Fall, with the invasion of Poland by muggle Nazi Germany, but he hadn’t stopped to think if Grindelwald Gellert was preparing for war.

 

Something about that thought, about Grindelwald and war, niggled at the back of his thoughts uncomfortably.

 

“ _And the children’s story?_ ” Kakashi asked, nodding towards the book.

 

Dumbledore flipped a page, pointing to three separate etchings, each displaying a separate brother receiving a gift from the English Shinigami. The first, a wand made of the branches of a tree beside the river, the second, a ring with a river stone, and the third the shinigami’s weathered cloak.

 

“ _Should Gellert possess any of these three items, a wand of unspeakable power, a ring that can summon the souls of the dead, or else a cloak of invisibility, especially if he possesses more than one, then you must steal them at any cost._ ”

 

His words were not simply stoic and somber, but said with gravitas, as if this, above all else was important. That if they failed in everything else they must accomplish this one task. Ren’s eyes lingered on the Shinigami in the drawings, thinking, oddly, of Eru Lee who would so often declare herself as death, the destroyer of worlds.

 

Dumbledore, however, did not explain how these items had come into existence, why they were in what looked like a children’s story, and why they must be stolen at any cost. Not even given back to Dumbledore, Ren thought with wide eyes, simply taken away from Grindelwald Gellert.

 

Dumbledore sighed, leaned back in his chair, and slowly explained to his stunned audience. No, it wasn’t an explanation, it was almost a confession, a guilty tirade and reason why he was hiring children for war against a man who he clearly didn’t intend to confront himself, “ _I fear for what Gellert intends with our world. With each year passing us by he seems to collect more and more power and influence, ever since the last war, he’s been like a star streaking across the sky at a rate that simply cannot be stopped. This is the moment that he can accomplish anything in the world, all we once ever dreamed of and I now shudder at, and if something isn’t done now then we will all suffer for it._ ”

 

He smiled then, again, and shook his head, “ _The law has tried and failed to contend with him, as Durmstang once tried and failed to contend with him, and now the law has changed and, on the continent,, he has all but become it. He whispers in the ears of ministers and when they open their mouths it’s his voice that comes out. All while England sticks its head in the sand, no, simply lies back and thinks of England while he prepares to destroy everything he touches. And I…_ ”

 

He trailed off and looked down at his own hands, without callouses and scars, “ _I am an academic, a man suited for books and libraries and dust, not the battlefield,_ ” he grimaced then turned his attention back to Ren and Kakashi, focusing in on them with piercing bright eyes, “ _So, I’m afraid, Mr. Hatake, Mr. Riddle, that_ shinobi _are all I have left to turn to. And I choose, here and now, to have faith in what you might accomplish where no one else can seem to accomplish anything at all.”_

 

For a moment none of them said anything, instead the strange silver toys on Dumbledore’s desk whirred, buzzed, and ticked to mark the seconds between words. Insult, anger, and a hint of fear coiled in Ren’s stomach as the reality of the situation pressed down on him.

 

Finally, Ren let out a slow, bitterly amused laugh and looking Dumbledore straight in the eye he bluntly asked, “ _Why should we help the English?_ ”

 

“ _The English,_ ” Ren added, lips curling around the words, feeling them leave his throat like heavy fumes of smoke rising upwards at an unstoppable rate, “ _Have never been all that inclined to help me, have they? They would have let me rot in that orphanage for eleven years, no, seventeen years! And when I do get here, when I’m allowed into their private little world, they make it a point to spit in my unworthy, foreign, dirty face. And you, what about you? You, who from the very beginning looked at Lee bleeding out with distaste and fear rather than even a hint of concern.  You, who calls upon_ ninja _as a last resort because he knows full well that everyone else will fail, and yet will certainly disavow us when everything is said and done, returning to the safe and easy role of condescending civilian professor. So, tell me, Professor, why should I help you?_ ”

 

Dumbledore said nothing for a moment, and bitterly, Ren wondered if he would bring up the money. That Konoha was a mercenary state, wasn’t it? Didn’t they just accept every dirty job that walked along so long as it had the right price tag attached?

 

Ren almost wanted him to say it, was waiting avidly for the man to come out and say it, and something in his mind burned and told him that someone had said it very recently to Ren in a situation where he had not been expecting it.

 

Said it softly, casually, and that Ren was still feeling the bitter wound of its aftermath.

 

“ _We will discuss it with our superiors._ ”

 

Ren turned, gaped, and felt almost betrayed as Kakashi looked across at Dumbledore with an out of character sobriety, as if he intended to think on this and possibly act on it. Kakashi, for his own part, did not even look at Ren but just kept staring at Dumbledore.

 

“ _If we accept we will need further details, about security, a time frame, everything you can about this man and what we should expect from this sort of a mission. Particularly, you will need to estimate the risks involved and be prepared to tell us honestly no matter the price._ ”

 

Dumbledore nodded, swiftly, a great sigh going out of him as if he realized that this meant he was more than on his way, terribly close to getting what he wanted, “ _Yes, of course, I will be here all summer and you can contact me by floo or owl._ ”

 

“Hatake,” Ren cut in, anger coloring his voice and making it coarse, switching to Kakashi’s mother tongue, “What are you doing? You can’t seriously think we’d risk negotiations with Grindelwald for…”

 

Kakashi cut him off, glanced at him with dark, cold, eyes, “It would not be prudent, Ren, to dismiss him out of hand. Particularly when neither of us is leading this mission.”

 

“ _Thank you,_ ” Dumbledore said, a truly heartfelt sentiment, a cheerier smile returning to his face now that he had gotten a hint of what he wanted, “ _Although, I must comment, that even though I’m somehow not surprised, Mr. Hatake, to find you out of anyone frequenting the girl’s restroom in the middle of summer but I’m still a touch curious and perhaps a bit concerned._ ”

 

“ _Ah, but, Professor,_ ” Kakashi exclaimed, easily slipping back into his usual role of the village idiot, “ _How else could I properly emulate the great and revered pervert sage or help raise Ren’s lethal army of oversized snakes?_ ”

 

Dumbledore laughed, popped a lemon drop into his mouth, and noted with twinkling eyes, “ _You are very lucky, Mr. Hatake, that school is not in session or that would be five detentions right there._ ”

 

“ _Yes, but they would be very memorable detentions,_ ” Kakashi said with an adorable smile, as if to convey that he knew Dumbledore secretly loved him even though he could kill grown men with his bare hands.

 

Ren, silently thinking of Grindelwald, of war, and of missions, sat in his plush seat and seethed.

 

* * *

 

It was Christmas in July, Ren thought with some wry bitter humor, as once again he, Kakashi, Lee, and Tobirama-shishou sat around the table in the purchased townhouse, bickering and discussing just what they were going to do about Grindelwald Gellert as if they hadn’t done the same thing six months before.

 

They were even, Ren thought with some amusement, sitting in the exact same seats as last time. Tobirama-shishou closest to the window with tea perpetually in hand, Lee sitting with her chair facing backwards, slumping over it and drumming her fingers on the table impatiently, Hatake sitting with his legs crossed and watching the proceedings with lazy gray eyes, and Ren biting down on his tongue and wishing that for once someone would listen to him.

 

The only addition was the basilisk stored inside Ren’s giant renovated trunk that, after they’d made up their goddamn minds already, would be shipped back to Konoha and dumped on someone else, likely Orochimaru-sama courtesy of his having the snake contract already, to deal with until Ren returned.

 

“I think we should do it,” Lee said, for the umpteenth time since Ren and Kakashi had returned from the castle, “He has the money, even for something on this level, and he’s clearly more than willing to pay it. I say we go for it.”

 

“To what end though?” Tobirama-shishou asked, also for the umpteenth time, “A single mission, yes, but we already have far closer ties with Grindelwald’s people than we do the _English_ and Dumbledore. Why risk all of that, lose all of that, for this one mission that will get us nothing at all?”

 

“There are bounties for him in _America_ ,” Lee cut in, “Extraordinarily large bounties, and it’s not assassination but information gathering, we can leave the killing to Dumbledore if he’s so inclined.”

 

Tobirmama-shishou held up his free hand to cut off her tirade, “None the less…”

 

“More, Grindelwald won’t last, he’s too ambitious,” Lee said, and her tone was something dark and almost anticipatory as she repeated words Dumbledore Albus had said earlier, “He’s a comet, nidaime-sama, he burns so brightly and brilliantly only because he is crashing through the heavens at such a fast rate.”

 

Glancing at Ren, causing him to shift in his seat, she added with upturned lips, “He will not last through this war of his, I guarantee it.”

 

Ren flushed, looked away, wondering why his heart was racing and why it had felt as if Lee had just stared through to the trembling soul beneath his skin. He couldn’t look back until finally, after far too long, her attention turned from him and back to the nidaime.

 

Lee, he thought, had believed every word Kakashi had said, what Dumbledore had said, without hesitation. No, like she’d known it the whole time and had just been waiting for someone else to clue in and say it to her face.

 

Ren wanted to scoff at that, as it was he slumped further into his chair, saying nothing. His eyes drifted over the kitchen, oddly devoid of books. Everything had been packed, most had already been shipped back to Konoha, everything prepared for immediate extraction and travel to the front. The war back home seemed suddenly present even in England where there wasn’t a shinobi in sight.

 

There was no guarantee, Ren thought, that they’d even be here long enough to complete the mission anyway.

 

Finally, Ren broke his silence, “But why? Why betray Grindelwald’s confidence? Why break that trust when he’s done nothing but…”

 

“That man has most certainly not done nothing,” Lee interjected harshly, again giving Ren a rather pointed look, like there was something specific that Ren himself was missing in this. Ren gritted his teeth and glared back, feeling for the first time that same helpless rage he’d felt when he first met her, when she’d stood there glorious and untouchable and such a disappointment compared to all the images of his imaginary father dancing inside his head.

 

“And he certainly doesn’t plan to do nothing either,” Lee added, “He will stab us all in the back at the first opportunity, not just Dumbledore Albus.”

 

“In that case,” Kakashi interjected, far too casually given the sudden tension between Ren and Lee, “I believe it’s not against our interest to gather information. More, is very much in our interests to find out who he is, what he really wants, and what he wants from us. Stealing a few overtly powerful objects, if he possesses them, can just be a bonus.”

 

“A bonus,” Ren said, voice dripping with distaste and contempt.

 

Tobirma-shishou was seriously considering it, nearly swayed by Lee and Kakashi, with Ren as the only sole remaining dissident of this giant waste of time, resources, and whatever trust Grindelwald had put into all of them.

 

Still, Ren acknowledged grudgingly, at least the man wasn’t gung-ho about as Lee was. At least there was that, but still, looking up at his master, Ren couldn’t help but think that the man was considering this all entirely too seriously.

 

Finally, with a sigh, the man said, “I suppose we’d best meet Dumbledore ourselves.”

 

* * *

 

They ended up meeting in the Hogsmeade pub The Three Broomsticks, located just outside the Hogwarts castle. It was a strange parallel to their meeting with Grindelwald, only, everything had been inverted.

 

Where the restaurant with Grindewald had been an elegant and artful array of crystal, wine, and fine dining this place clearly catered to the local civilian populace and was a hop skip and a jump away from being The Leaky Cauldron. There on the walls were winking posters of professional quidditch teams, everything was wooden, and there was a hearty and homey feel to the place with its frothing butterbeer and piles of strange chakra enfused English wizarding finger food.

 

Dumbledore, today sporting fuschia and a truly uncomfortable expression, fit right bloody in.

 

Dumbledore, in his crisp clear English, was in the midst of morosely and nostalgically describing Grindelwald’s personality traits, all those tiny details that Kakashi had demanded inside of Dumbledore’s office when this all started.

 

“I’m sure you’ve noticed, but Gellert has always had an overwhelming charisma,” Dumbledore said, finger circling the edge of his glass, staring down into the yellow liquid as if he could see his memories playing out in the muddled reflection, “It’s a kind of charm, not polite by any means, but a charm that has you overlook all the odd details and warning sign that should have caught your interest. He doesn’t seem innocent though, no, there is always that hint of danger underneath his façade, but it does not ward you off, instead it draws you in and compels…”

 

Ren tried not to stare at the man too closely, tried to school his thoughts into contempt and wonder if perhaps Dumbledore might have once been Grindelwald’s young lover, but his stomach rolled in nauseous recognition of everything the Transfiguration professor was saying.

 

So that Ren could almost feel himself, against his will and better judgement, paling ever so slightly while his fingers began to shake.

 

“Even when he is so clearly dangerous and makes no pretense at hiding it,” Dumbledore continued with a small mirthful and self-deprecating smile, “Even in the beginning, when I first met him, he had already been expelled from Durmstang, that in and of itself quite the accomplishment. Yet, I did not care in the slightest, did not think to question that perhaps there had been a legitimate reason, other than imagined vanity and jealousy over Gellert’s eccentric genius, that he had been thrown out. Despite knowing he was dangerous, seeing how dangerous he was, I somehow did not know he was dangerous. That, I’m afraid, is Gellert’s great talent.”

 

“That’s all very good,” Lee said, taking a sip of her butterbeer, somehow so casual in the face of Dumbledore’s almost eerie reminiscing, “But what exactly is it that you think we should be looking for, and why the wand, the ring, and the cloak?”

 

“The elder wand, the resurrection stone, and Death’s cloak are relics of an old wizard’s fable called ‘The Tale of Three Brothers’,” Dumbledore said, and as he did so his eyes roved the room and a barely perceptible genjutsu grew around them to ward off the eyes and ears of interested eavesdroppers, “In the story, Death provides these three cursed gifts to the brothers, and all but the last die in tragic circumstances due to their hubris. However, stories have basis in reality, it is believed by more than a few that the three brothers were the brothers Peverell, that they possessed at one point three artifacts of great power and ties to death itself, and that these objects still exist somewhere in Europe and quite possibly in England itself.”

 

Lee suddenly looked extremely interested, leaning forward, eyes gleaming as she asked, “Are you saying that these brothers Peverell met and bargained with the _Shinigami_ , the god of death?”

 

Dumbledore paused, gave her a sort of funny look, as if realizing that Lee more than believed such a god existed and would fully believe that three brothers were capable of summoning and bargaining with such a creature. Wizards, Ren had learned, were by and large stout athiests who did not even have time for ancient pagan pantheons. Dumbledore did not believe in a Shinigami, but that Lee did, and with such conviction, seemed to give him pause.

 

Finally, he said, “It is a theory, certainly, though I have always believed that, through great magic and ingenuity, they fashioned the wand, the stone, and the cloak themselves.”

 

He tried to smile, a worn, almost terrified thing, “I suppose, not having seen any of the three myself, I will simply never know.”

 

“But you believe Grindelwald has gathered them?” Tobirama-shishou asked, hands now laced together as he looked Dumbledore directly in the eye.

 

“Oh, not all of them, certainly not but he would only need one,” Dumbledore said, then paused, thinking over his words. As he did so the muted sounds of the pub ran over them, strangely domestic and inane in comparison to the conversation, “Gellert, Gellert and myself when I was very young and very… misguided, once had grand and terrible ambitions. I make… few excuses for myself, there are excuses to be had, but they would not interest you. In my own way, I was desperately naïve, and I paid for it dearly. However, we once dreamed that we would gather the deathly hallows for ourselves and declare ourselves masters of death, that we would then use this power to build a new world order, to break the statute of secrecy and enslave the muggles to serve an elite world order of wizards and witches. I… I woke up to this dream and the terrible utopia it promised, Gellert never did.”

 

Suddenly, Ren remembered that Grindelwald had said something about that at several points. He’d utterly been fascinated with Konoha’s rejection, no, complete lack of understanding of the statue of secrecy. He’d also been more than a little bitter about the wizarding world’s handling or Ren and Lee’s situation and the muggles in general, had said that the governments were kowtowing to these oblivious civilians who had no idea of their place in the world.

 

That unsteady rolling of Ren’s stomach became a bit stronger.

 

Dumbledore sighed, divorcing himself from his memories and his guilt, and said, “I don’t have the power, or perhaps I simply lack the will, to confront and defeat Gellert myself. However much I should, however much he is the ghost of my past, I am… I would not win, and he would use my corpse as a banner. However, you, your people, perhaps you can in my place.”

 

No one said anything for a moment, instead letting Grindelwald’s ambitions, his goals, the shadow of his presence linger like a miasma over their table.

 

Finally, Tobirama asked that same question he had asked Lee, the one Ren had asked Dumbledore, “But what, Mr. Dumbledore, will this do for _Konohagakure_?”

 

For a moment Dumbledore seemed at a complete loss of what to say, just sat there, blinking, looking down at his hands as if they could tell him the words he needed. The chattering of the other customers, about quidditch and the next Hogwarts term and Witch Weekly seemed unbearably loud.

 

“Because, I believe, that no matter our differences, no matter our vastly different cultures, the blood on your hands, the blood on mine, that you have that moral spark that drives you to do what is right rather than what is easy or convenient. Perhaps more of one than any other people I have ever met, if only because you know what war truly tastes like from your earliest childhood memories. This is not about the benefit of nation states but about the future of a people, of our world and everyone who lives in it, and a chance for a true and lasting peace that does not rely on fear, violence, and despair.”

 

Dumbledore’s voice grew stronger, and as it did Ren swore he could almost see the shadow of Senju Hashirama lingering over him, as he had put forth an idea of peace that not one man from any clan had believed was possible.

 

“Perhaps there is a road to demolishing the statute of secrecy, to aiding muggleborns, squibs, and righting all the many wrongs of this country. Perhaps Gellert has a point and has always had a point, but this is not the way to do it, and this road he’s paved for us is built on bricks of carnage. The path to peace, to hope, is not in direction Gellert so dearly wishes for us to travel.”

 

Tobirama-shishou for a moment said nothing, simply looked at Dumbledore Albus, and Ren wondered if the man saw what Ren himself had only a few seconds before. Ren thought he did, if only because even before the nidaime opened his mouth, Ren knew that he had already accepted.

 

“We will take your mission, Professor Dumbledore,” Tobirama said, reaching over with a pale hand to shake Dumbledore’s, who sagged with relief.

 

Ren felt something inside him wilt, as if the sun that had been shining overhead was now hidden behind a wall of impenetrable clouds.

 

Lee however, just grinned, drummed her fingers on the table, and said cheerily, “Oh, this is just going to be so much fun.”

 

* * *

 

Lee, spread out on the sofa inside their town house, was laid on her stomach, legs lazily kicking back and forth in the air, while in front of her she was in ballpoint pen writing out a letter to Grindelwald Gellert as if he was her long-lost pen-pal. Tobirama-shishou and Hatake were nowhere in sight, both having gone back to Konoha to debrief yet again and also hand off the basilisk to Orochimaru, leaving Lee to do what was needed to get Grindelwald on board with this.

 

This being her and Ren spying on him, given that they had the most pretext out of any of them to actually be in Grindelwald Gellert’s company.

 

Ren, standing above Lee’s shoulder, glared down at the parchment and Lee’s blunt English handwriting on it, specifically her casual mention that she and Ren would be ever so delighted to join Gellert on his summer tour of central Europe.

 

Beneath this, a mysterious and infuriating line, “You see, after a bit of time, I’ve given what you said to me a bit of thought…”

 

Ren, tapping Lee on the shoulder then pointing at the line in question, asked, “What is that supposed to mean?”

 

Lee glanced over her shoulder at him, eyes wide and deep and so terribly green, and said casually, “It’s nothing.”

 

It didn’t look like nothing, Ren thought, granted he had no idea what it was supposed to mean except that just as he and Grindelwald had talked so apparently had Grindelwald and Lee when Ren wasn’t looking. Something in him didn’t like that idea, for all that he wished they weren’t doing this, he also really didn’t like the reminder that Lee and Grindelwald had been alone quite often.

 

And that Ren had no idea what they had gotten up to.

 

“You know,” Lee continued with clear amusement, apparently not realizing that Ren’s attention had drifted, “For someone who believes himself so terribly sly and clever, Grindelwald Gellert is unbelievably gauche.”

 

Something in that itched at him, in annoying nagging sort of way, like he had forgotten something important or set something down somewhere in the apartment and had no bloody idea where it had gotten off to.

 

So instead he just hummed, neither agreeing nor disagreeing about why Grindelwald would be gauche of all things, and then said, “You know, this mission is stupid and needlessly dangerous.”

 

Lee said nothing to this, just smiled and continued writing, now detailing about all the places she hoped that she and Ren might see with Grindelwald playing informative tour guide over the summer. That and that apparently she liked piña coladas, getting caught in the rain, and was not into health food, yoga, but was into champagne.

 

Ren gritted his teeth, forcing his annoyance to go someplace else and stop bothering him already, and asked, “Why do you want to betray his trust so badly when he’s done nothing? When he’s done much more for us than Dumbledore or anyone else has?”

 

“Betrayal of trust is a fighting term, Ren,” Lee mused, “If he honestly expected us not to gather intelligence on him, spy on him, then he’s a fool and deserves anything he gets.”

 

Ren was about to respond to this, opened his mouth to retort, but then cut himself off. Lee looked tired, he thought, oddly solemn even beneath this forced casual attitude she was wearing along with civilian clothing and oversized socks, as if even writing this letter alone she was already preparing for the hypothetical war Dumbledore had given Grindelwald.

 

“All I ask, Ren,” Lee said, finishing by signing her name elegantly at the bottom of the letter, beneath a somehow meaningful “sincerely”, “is that you remember who and what you are.”

 

“Who I am?” Ren asked, wondering when he was supposed to have forgotten.

 

But Lee, folding the letter now and placing it into an envelope with Grindelwald’s name and mailing address on the front, looked deathly serious, “You are a chunin of Konohagakure, you took your exam and earned your headband and your vest along with all the bitter responsibilities and paranoia that comes with it. You are a soldier, a spy, a warrior, and an assassin, and anything more civilian, blind faith in the gifts and flattery of foreigners, was lost to you the moment you took my hand in the orphanage.”

 

Then, looking him in the eye, leaving him no room to look anywhere else, Lee added, “And Grindelwald Gellert, above all else, is foreign.”

 

* * *

 

They met in Berlin, at the edge of the muggle world and the city’s magical district. Grindelwald stood there in the direct sunlight, golden hair almost glowing, and as they ported in Ren couldn’t help but think the man looked something like a Greek god, there was a majesty and beauty about him that seemed almost dangerous to mortal eyes, a promise of swift retribution in his shadow beneath his golden visage.

 

He smiled, teeth white, at the pair of them and he spoke to them as if they had never left his side, “Lee, Ren, it is so good to see you again.”

 

He walked up towards them, first towards Lee, embraced her lightly, face lingering beside her ear for a second too long, before pulling back and shaking Ren’s hand in typical European custom. Lee’s smile, Ren could help but notice, seemed almost darkly amused by this.

 

Ren let his attention wander instead to the city, taking in the grandeur of it. Lee spoke quite a bit about Nazis and the Third Reich, mostly she spoke of the war and the atrocities they committed, she hadn’t spoken about their cities and the architecture, how grandiose it all seemed. Like it really was Rome rebuilt here in Germany.

 

“Yes, quite impressive, isn’t it?” Gellert asked, looking with Ren at great marble buildings, “The Nazis are quite ambitious and wish the world to know it. Which, I’m sure it will in short order.”

 

“Enough of that though,” Grindelwald said with a smile towards them both, “Come, bring your things, we should get you checked into my hotel, my room I’m afraid what with your last-minute arrival. Either way we have a lot to do today, a lot of very important wizards to meet and places to see, and absolutely no time in the world to do it in.”

 

Ren was caught again thinking on what Dumbledore had said, on his own musings of Grindelwald, that the man really was just exceedingly charming. It was different, in a way, than Minato’s charm. Minato had a similar charisma to him that drew you in, but there was something more genuine in it, like the light of his soul was so bright that you couldn’t help but want to be close to it.

 

Even when you loathed him for it.

 

Grindelwald’s wasn’t like that, there were none of the complicated feelings he had with Namikaze Minato, just that strange compulsion to walk beside him and stand near him and hang on every word he said.

 

“Ah, diplomacy,” Lee said, blanching ever so slightly, almost convincingly, “You know, when I said take me and Ren on a whirligig tour of Europe while romancing me, acting as a diplomat at your exceedingly boring dinner parties was not what I had in mind.”

 

Romancing?!

 

Ren’s eyes flew open, his mouth opened but only gagging spluttering noises came out, but Grindelwald just laughed in good cheer, “Oh, but Lee, those dull dinner parties can be quite entertaining. Especially when they break out the champagne, you would not believe some of the things I’ve seen when the magical aristocracy starts to let loose.”

 

Champagne, Ren thought, a sort of dull sinking horror settling into his stomach. Lee’s letter had mentioned champagne, had very specifically mentioned champagne, and Ren couldn’t help but think it wasn’t a coincidence that Grindelwald had mentioned that instead of wine.

 

“If they start shaking what their mother gave them then I cannot be held responsible for my actions,” Lee said, raising up a hand as if already to swear to her own defense.

 

Grindelwald laughed, he clearly didn’t get the joke, couldn’t understand the joke, but he laughed all the same like it was the wittiest goddamn thing he’d ever heard in his life. His hand, Ren noticed, rested on the small of Lee’s back, the other on Ren’s shoulder, and Ren felt a shudder run through him.

 

Soon enough they were checking into the hotel room, throwing their things into Grindelwald’s room which with the double beds and a sofa bed was just large enough for the three of them, and then sure enough they were off and watching Grindelwald meet with this duke, that duchess, that lord, and even the magical kaiser.

 

Each laughed at Grindelwald’s wit, smiled at his charm, and drank his champagne and toasted to his health and his plans which seemed more reasonable to them with every sip of alcohol passing through their lips.

 

Then there were great galas, dancing in formal robes, toasts of champagne, hushed discussion with ministers and bureaucrats, and then packed suitcases and a destination of Munich, Prague, Venice, Rome, Florence, and so on and so forth all through Europe while in the streets the Nazis held grand parades with torches, red banners, and burned Jewish books in the streets.

 

There was hardly time for dark jutsus or alchemy, hardly time for anything at all other than moving, waiting, watching and trying to keep his head together. Sometimes he and Ren would sit together, during one of these parties, and the man would look at him and Ren would feel himself squirm and attempt to show nothing about the fact that he was spying on him or that he wasn’t going back to Durmstang in the Fall.

 

Except Grindelwald had smiled at that last bit, and had simply said that he understood and there were no hard feelings. He knew, he said, that it had not been Ren’s decision to return to Hogwarts.

 

Except, somehow, Ren had thought that was an insult. As if Grindelwald’s golden eyes were laughing at him somehow as he said it, even as his lips were curved into a genuine and sympathetic smile.

 

The scent of war was everywhere, sweet and sickening, a bitter aftertaste in every glass of champagne. And always, in its afterimage, was Grindelwald’s polite and charming smile, or his eyes lingering for a second too long on Lee’s pale neck.

 

And Ren, standing to the side by the buffet, didn’t know what to think anymore.

 

* * *

 

Lee was much less conflicted.

 

She started, within the first day, to start reading through all of Grindelwald’s private correspondence. She easily undid whatever security and encryption jutsus he had placed on it and would, slumped on the couch, flick through one after the other.

 

Ren would stand behind her, sometimes listening to her read some of them out loud, and found he didn’t have much to say at all.

 

According to his letters, it was clear that Grindelwald Gellert was very much orchestrating the beginnings of a major conflict, an invasion both to the west and the east, muggle and magical. There was only the barest of hints of this in person, the slight dancing around the edges of the topic, hardly noticeable at all, but in letters it was so straightforward and so blunt.

 

Poland would be invaded in September, which would bring England and France into war.

 

Only the wand, the ring, and the cloak, the three deathly hallows, remained a mystery unspoken of in any letter.

 

Suddenly, Grindelwald’s ambitions seemed much larger than Ren had ever guessed and no longer benign enough to be ignored. More, everything seemed to have a purpose, everyone was a piece on the chess board.

 

Which meant that Ren, standing over Lee’s shoulder in Rome, couldn’t help but ask, “What does he want with you and me, Lee?”

 

It was the first time he’d asked it, the first time he’d dared to, but Lee just laughed, a light, amused, tinkling sound as if Ren had just asked the darndest thing. Outside the window, Rome was spread before them, the shadow of the great empire still visible in the remains of the palace on Palatine hill as well as the colosseum, always hanging over the more modern city.

 

“Please, Ren, it’s obvious,” Lee said, setting the letter aside to give him a rather frank look, “The man wants power and shinobi.”

 

Yet, that wasn’t obvious to Ren, never had been. He felt like it should have been, like Lee and even Tobirama-shishou and Kakashi had been aware of it the whole time, but somehow Ren hadn’t known at all.

 

“You know he’s been seducing you to his side, don’t you?”

 

Ren spluttered, paled, then asked, “Seducing?!”

 

“Well, not in the romantic sense, not yet at least, if you were a few years older I wouldn’t put it past him to add in that missing sexual element,” Lee said, again as if it was obvious, as if Ren should have seen it from the beginning, should have remembered his ego and his place and thought that it was unnatural that Grindelwald would give him so much attention, would focus on him and praise him and…

 

Ren’s eyes sharpened, he reached out desperately towards Lee, hands falling onto her shoulders and asking, “What about you, Lee? Has he done that with you?”

 

Lee just gave him a look, didn’t even answer, just raised her eyebrows and made it perfectly clear that of course the man had. And that with Lee, sixteen years old now, he had certainly not been holding back that missing sexual element.

 

And then that nagging in his head, that itch, was suddenly all too clear and Ren remembered a dance at Durmstang, the sight of Eru Lee and Grindelwald Gellert dancing in each other’s arms, a bitter confrontation in the gardens, and the bitter humiliation and terror as a wand had pointed down towards his head.

 

Ren sprinted into the bathroom, flung himself over the bowl of the toilet, and vomited.

 

But they weren’t done yet, they were so far from being done, suddenly the weeks left of the summer seemed unbearably long and the expanse of Europe unbearably wide. Ren sat still and shuddered and tried to play at his assumed role of hopeless naiveite in a way he could no longer quite manage.

 

And how easily he’d fallen into too.

 

It had been simple, the man in a matter of moments had found Ren’s weaknesses, the ones desperately inherited from the English civilian orphan Tom Marvolo Riddle. Pride, pride and hubris, and a desperate need for recognition.

 

Lee had told him in the beginning, Minato had repeated it, then Hatake Kakashi had done so after them. Always, every single time, it was that pride and that need to be praised and seen as the glorious thing that he was that destroyed him.

 

He underestimated others, preened under flattery and not recognizing when it was undeserved, and became a fool if only to be seen as something terrible and great rather than something that could one day be terrible and great.

 

A tendril of self-loathing, a curl of dark smoke in his soul, coiled like a snake around his heart. It whispered in his ear every second of every day, reminding him that it had come to this, but only for Ren as Lee, Kakashi, and Tobirama-shishou had all seen and marked it for whatit was, but never Ren.

 

And he wanted nothing more now than to kill Grindelwald Gellert.

 

It was in the little things, the way those golden hands would curl into Lee’s unbound hair, the way he’d dip his arm and show her into a room, how close he would sit to her inside of the various hotel rooms offering her champagne in front of the fire.

 

It was all subtle, to a point, but only to a point and now that Ren had seen it for what it was the images burned every time he closed his eyes. Like they had etched themselves on the inside of his eyelids so that he would never forget them.

 

It was in the bubbles of the champagne, the slight hint of intoxication that would loosen his posture and threaten to loosen Lee’s, in the shadows of his eyes as they would trace her form from her neck to her legs, as he’d lean forward against her back with his hands lightly resting on her hips to keep her in place. It was everywhere.

 

And Ren wanted to murder him as he had never wanted to murder anyone before.

 

Murder him for Lee, for the garden, for his pitiful failure…

 

Only Dumbledore’s own words resounded through his head, that this was a fight Dumbledore could not win, and it was a fight that Ren had already lost once before. They were here for intelligence, for objects, not an unnecessary assassination.

 

Still, Ren thought as he watched the man laugh again and again and again, that didn’t mean he wanted to murder him any less.

 

* * *

 

Lee, one night, was out somewhere. Stepped out to purchase late night snacks or late-night wine, leaving Grindelwald and Ren alone for the first time in a room. Outside the moon was almost full and a strange dull yellow color, there were no stars, but instead the streetlamps shone brightly.

 

Beside them the fireplace crackled pleasantly, and Grindelwald, perfectly at ease, poured himself and Ren the last of the rosé.

 

Ren, dully, with a small nod of thanks, took the glass from the man’s hand. Their fingers brushed, and Ren could not help but think that Grindelwald’s fingers were entirely too warm, like fire instead of blood was running through his veins.

 

Grindelwald smiled, a wolfish expression, and watched as Ren swirled the win in a slow circular motion.

 

Finally, Grindelwald said, “You know, Ren, I know you’ve remembered the dance.”

 

Ren stopped, eyes flicking towards the man, catching amusement in his expression at the confirmation. Grindelwald continued, “That’s very impressive, almost unheard of for a wizard not practiced in occlumency to break through _obliviate_. However, your acting, hiding your anger, that could use some work I’m afraid.”

 

Yet, Ren thought, for all his failed pretense Grindelwald didn’t seem the slightest bit concerned that Ren had remembered everything. He still saw Ren as a hopeless child, a thing of potential, who not only could not defeat him but would not.

 

As if the world was Grindelwald Gellert’s already, in all but name, and there was nothing anyone could do about it.

 

“You know you left me little choice,” Grindelwald said, “I hardly wanted to fight but you made it very clear you’d accept nothing less.”

 

“I would rather fight and lose than be your tool,” Ren said finally, voice hard and cold and unsuited for the atmosphere, “Your unwitting pawn.”

 

“Oh, Ren,” Grindelwald said with a fond sigh, “All men are either pawns or players, and you, my friend, are far too young to be sitting on one side of the board or another.”

 

Ren spared the man a dry and unamused look, finally deciding to be blunt, and asked, “Do you only have the balls to say this because Lee is out of the room?”

 

The man burst out laughing, truly amused, to the point where he almost spilled his wine. He didn’t though, no Grindelwald would never be so foolish and classless as to spill his wine during a fit of hysterics.

 

“Your friend is intimidating, yes,” Grindelwald said, “However she and I have had similar discussions quite often.”

 

“Have you?” Ren asked, but Grindelwald just smiled, as if the trap was almost closing in on both Lee and Ren without either of them having the ability to do anything to stop it.

 

“It’s why you came,” Grindelwald said, “Why you left Durmstang, and now, why you came back to see me during the summer.”

 

Ren said nothing, did nothing, did not let Grindelwald see that it was for anything but that. That Lee, long ago, had marked Grindelwald for what he was and dismissed him. Lee, Ren realized, as she would always be above the Tom Marvolo Riddles of the world would always be above the Grindelwald Gellerts as well.

 

However golden he appeared, Ren thought, with the valience, the nobility, and innate goodness this man was not even close to Namikaze Minato’s league. There was nothing in this world or any world that a man like Grindelwald Gellert could offer Eru Lee.

 

“You have a choice too, of course,” Grindelwald said, setting his wine down onto the table and turning to look Ren fully in the eye, “You do not have to be a child soldier, Ren, you do not have to be a pawn for _Konoha_.”

 

Ren bristled instinctively, eyebrows lowering and mouth opening, but Grindelwald held up a hand before he could even start, “Yours is a bleak future with an early demise, living in a world without morals, without honor, in a land that will always be foreign to you. With me, Ren, you will not have that. You’ll have pride, use your prowess as a soldier and a dark wizard, but you will have all those comforts of a civilian life that you thought were lost to you.”

 

Grindelwald’s lips curved into a smile, a charming thing that was a warm and sensual as the taste of the wine, “Perhaps you might even become an official diplomat for your people, take the best of both worlds even as you fix this one into the golden empire it could be.”

 

Ren barely held his voice in check, only asked, in a baited softness, “Is that what you think of me? Of my people?”

 

Gellert brought his hands together, thinking, and in the sleeve of his robe Ren caught a pale wood. Only a flash, but enough to remind of the branches of elder trees, and a wand from legend that was bestowed upon a brother Peverell by death itself.

 

Before the man could think, before he could answer or shift, Ren asked, “What about Lee? What did you offer her, see in her?”

 

And just as Ren thought, as always, Lee was enough to distract anyone. His eyes were distant, he thought over her name, her memories, trying to find the words that would convince both Ren and Lee unequivocally into this war he was planning, into his great empire to become his personal assassins.

 

“Ah, yes, Lee. She is… more stubborn than even Albus,” Grindelwald said with a shake of his head, “I could make her a queen but she says she is not interested in such materialistic things as that. When really, I could think of nothing less material.”

 

Ren, carefully, with intense concentration, substituted the liquid Suna poison in a vial in his weapons pouch, the one Grindelwald had never thought to confiscate from him, and substituted it for the same portion of Grindelwald’s untouched wine.

 

The man did not even blink, did not notice, he was already so drunk on power if not wine. He sighed and shook his head with fondness, eyes still filled with the defiant Lee, “I think I have made a mistake, in treating her as if she is a princess, when in truth she is a valiant prince.”

 

“Yes,” Ren said, lifting his own cup, raising it in a bitter toast, “After all, she saved me from my dark tower.”

 

So casually too, with such ease and with nothing asked in return, whereas Grindelwald who attempted the same asked everything in return.

 

Grindelwald picked up his glass, amused by Ren’s gesture, “To Lee?”

 

Ren clinked his glass against the man’s, the tink sounding too loud in his ears, too bright against the crackling of the fire, “To Lee, to war, and to my future.”

 

Both tilted their heads back, drank the wine, each a long and too large swallow before looking back at each other.

 

Suna poisons were vicious things, the bane of Senju Tsunade’s existence just as Senju Tsunade had once been the bane of Chiyo of Sunagakure’s existence. Some were designed for assassination, for a slow mission where blame was shifted and misdirected, almost impossible to detect or circumvent. Others, used in battles, were oh so noticeable oh so quickly, with only seconds to spare for an antidote if one even existed.

 

Within seconds, as Grindelwald Gellert’s pupils dilated and his skin paled, Ren could see the effects even if Grindelwald could not feel them yet.

 

So, Ren leaned forward, distracting him further, as he mused, “You’ll never have her, you know.”

 

Grindelwald tried to smile, tried to be amused by the comment, but he must be starting to feel that something somewhere had gone terribly wrong, he pitched forward even as Ren continued, “Simply, you do not deserve her, in the bedroom or even the battlefield. Your fight with Lee, at the end of all this, it’s not going to happen.”

 

Grindelwald snapped out his wand, it falling from the holster in his sleeve into his hand, a pale thing made of elder, mouth opening, but poison had already slowed him down and he lacked the element of surprise, Ren quickly threw two kunai directly into the man’s palms and silenced his voice with an English jutsu.

 

“I will crush you like a cockroach beneath my heel and you will never even look at her again,” Ren hissed, and with that he summoned the wand into his own hand, felt an answering thrum of chakra from the wood, a darker and headier power than even the feeling of his own wand in Ollivanders’.

 

It was already stained by Grindelwald’s dark blood.

 

Grindelwald looked up at him in terror, even as he wretchedly, silently, tried to pull the kunai out of his mangled bleeding hands, wandlessly and wordlessly attempting to eviscerate Ren right where he stood.

 

Ren pointed the wand at Grindelwald's head, “Hubris, that’s the name of your sin, your great fatal flaw. Not the greed, the ambition, but the hubris that let you think that you had already won months ago in a garden.”

 

Ren smiled, an entirely too pleasant, and too charming grin borrowed from Grindelwald himself, “I don’t have hubris, not like you, I lost it a long time ago in _Konohagakure_. That’s why I’ve won, and how I, a civilian English orphan, will master death.”

 

A swish, a flick, and “ _Diffindo_.”

**Author's Note:**

> This is one of those that just keeps going actually. I'm marking as complete for now as I think we end here in a solid place though often for 100th review fics or commissions "The Tale of Ren" will pop back up. It all started back when someone asked for a fic with Tom Riddle growing up in Konoha.
> 
> Thanks for reading, comments, kudos, and bookmarks are appreciated.


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